


Time Was Running Wild

by louciferish



Series: Bedtime Stories [1]
Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Boarding School, Canon Compliant, Childhood Friends, First Meetings, High School, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Light Angst, M/M, Pre-Series, School Dances, Sharing a Bed, Unrequited Crush, platonic intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28738602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish/pseuds/louciferish
Summary: “Ah, don’t look at me like that, Howard.”“Like what?” Howard sounded like he was being actively strangled by a homicidal goose.“Like I, I dunno, snapped one of your awful records in half.” Howard drew back at that image, outraged at the very thought, and Vince grinned again. “It’s just because there’s some stupid dance coming up, right?”
Relationships: Howard Moon/Vince Noir, Mrs Gideon & Howard Moon
Series: Bedtime Stories [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2106945
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (slaps the hood of the fic) This baby can fit SO many headcanons.
> 
> I outlined a different Boosh fic, and then I got into the booshlr discord, and then suddenly this was happening instead and it happened fast, and now here we are.
> 
> Brief disclaimer on this that I'm American and this is researched but not britpicked, so there may be language or school system elements that aren't... quite right. If you notice something fairly minor (that I can fix with a ~5 minute edit) feel free to let me know! Otherwise, it's Boosh, so I feel like "accuracy" is an abstract concept.
> 
> For the purposes of this story (and in general) I've gone with Howard's early season assertions of "We're the same age!" but I put Vince on just the wrong side of the school year in terms of birth date, so they're in different grades. 
> 
> Re: the homophobia tag, in case you have a concern -- there's a flashback scene later in the fic where some other boys refer to Vince and Howard both using some mild, period-typical casual slurs ("fairy" and "pansy"). Nothing serious or violent, just garbage kids being garbage.

The academy’s art department was in a sad state even before Howard started school there. Dusty placquards and faded banners hanging in the hallway made him think that might not have always been the case, but these days his footsteps echoed like the beat of a lonely snare as he walked. The hall always smelled like chemicals -- ink and turpentine, with just a hint of mold -- and it made Howard hold a sleeve to his nose as he scanned the little windows into darkened rooms. It wasn’t his kind of scene, no sir. Howard preferred the great outdoors, smokey jazz clubs, and whiskey-haunted libraries to this kind of mess.

At least, that was what he thought he’d prefer. It was all a bit theoretical still, being a teenager and also living in Leeds. There weren’t exactly a huge number of jazz clubs in bicycling distance eager to let him in. But they would. Someday. 

Howard stuck his head through the door of the last room at the end of the hall. Through the dim evening light filtering through one dirty window, he could make out the familiar silhouette of his best mate, jagged-cut hair sticking up at all angles and pink tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth as he hunched over his latest project. Vince’s fingers were coated in vibrant green paint, and his blue uniform blazer was dotted with white and black smudges. Even his beloved hair showed signs of an artist at work. Vince had a tendency to grab at his hair when he was thinking, or nervous, or not thinking at all, and there was nearly as much paint on the strands as there was root boost.

“There you are, little man,” Howard said. Vince didn’t jump, only hummed and swiped his fingers over his canvas again. “It’s well past three, you know.”

“I know, but if I could just--” He touched the painting again, squirming in his chair but unable to leave it alone.

There was nothing else for it when he got like this. Howard picked his way through the cluttered room to Vince’s table and delicately picked up the wet canvas from the edges. “They’ve shut off all the lights. You’ve got to go.”

“I do my best work in the dark,” Vince whined. “You know that!”

“Only because you’re hardly awake in the daylight.” Howard stacked the painting up against the back wall and squinted at it, his tiny eyes shrinking down to specks. It was that creature again, the green man with the giant thumb and one wide, white eye like someone stapled a polo to his face. Of all the subjects Vince painted, this one was Howard’s second least-favorite, right after the pink blob.

It was best not to mention the pink blob.

When he turned back from putting the canvas out to dry, Vince was reclining his chair back against the table, watching Howard with an easy grin. He was almost wearing a proper school uniform this time. The blazer and trousers were standard issue, at least. The neon pink Bowie shirt and star-spattered kerchief around his neck, less so. Howard would never quite understand how Vince got away with it. _He_ got taken to task by the staff if his ankles showed when he crossed his legs. Too distracting for the female students, probably. 

“What are you doing skulking about in here after school hours, anyway?” Vince asked.

“Keeping you from getting entombed in the art room all night again. One of these days, you’ll be locked in a whole weekend.”

“That’d be fine. I’d curl up among the canvases. They’d find me in the morning wrapped in a blanket of acrylics with my hair done up in biros like a nana.”

“You’d panic,” Howard said flatly. “If the whole school found you like that, you’d be out of your mind. _Ah, my hair’s gone flat! My shirt’s the same as yesterday! This is an outrage!_ ”

Vince giggled and let his chair legs hit the tile again with a loud snap. “Yeah, maybe not. Good thing I’ve got you around to save me.”

“That’s right, sir. Howard Moon, colon, _Savior_.”

“On second thought, that don’t sound right at all,” Vince gasped between giggles. _Colon Savior_.

“Alright, alright. Just get your things, yeah? Let’s get out before the teachers leave and we’re both locked in for the night.”

Vince grabbed a few handfuls of biros and brushes before reaching for his bag. Bookbags were one of the few accessories at the academy with no uniform restrictions, but most students fell into one of two camps -- leather satchels, or canvas backpacks. Of course, Vince’s bag had to be an exception. He’d had the same one since grade school, a battered, cross-body canvas mess. Over the years, he’d attacked it with so many coats of paint, patches, sequins, and ribbons that Howard suspected none of the original fabric was even left. It was a husk of a bag, a clownish ghost of something a normal person might carry.

Given the way Vince abused it, it came as no surprise that when he grabbed the strap, it ripped, half the contents spilling out onto the dirty, paint-spattered art room floor. 

“Shit.” Vince went scrambling for the stuff that landed on the table, and Howard stooped to grab the chaos of papers on the floor. 

Crumpled up worksheets with scores marked in thick red and past-due assignments fell like confetti, and Howard had a lecture already prepared on his tongue as he grabbed them. Sure, Vince had never listened to his speeches on proper organization of stationary in the past, but that didn’t mean Howard would stop trying.

As he gathered up a few thick, pink and white envelopes, the chemical smells of the art room receded, and Howard noticed something new. _Perfume_. It was sweet, floral, _feminine_. His first thought was that it might be Vince, but then he noticed the envelopes in his hand and the neat, loopy handwriting on them in glitter gel and bright colored inks. He raised the notes to his face and -- carefully -- sniffed.

He nearly dropped the pile. “Vince, are these from _girls_?” Howard’s voice cracked, squeaking on the last word. He pretended it hadn’t.

“Yeah, guess so,” Vince said, grabbing the papers from Howard’s hands and shoving them into his bag. 

Howard stared down at more envelopes still scattered across the floor. “But there must be a dozen of them!”

“More still in the bag,” Vince muttered, snatching up the rest. Howard could hear them crumpling, perhaps even ripping as he stuffed them into his bookbag, then shouldered it. “Ah, don’t look at me like that, Howard.”

“Like what?” Howard sounded like he was being actively strangled by a homicidal goose.

“Like I, I dunno, snapped one of your awful records in half.” Howard drew back at that image, outraged at the very thought, and Vince grinned again. “It’s just because there’s some stupid dance coming up, right?”

 _Some stupid dance._ Howard knew what Vince meant, of course. The academy only held one dance every year -- the sixth form formal graduation dance. As Howard was getting ready to graduate himself in mere weeks, he could choose to go if he wanted. Younger students like Vince (who was a lowly Year 12) could only go if they were asked as a date.

Howard had never been asked. 

He snapped out of his thoughts at the gentle brush of Vince’s hand on his elbow. “Don’t touch me,” he said flatly, and Vince giggled and squeezed his bicep. “What?”

“Think I hear the janitor coming. Unless you changed your mind about getting locked in…”

Howard could hear it too now -- the shuffling of the bins and brooms, jingling keys. He nudged Vince toward the door, then caught another little sheaf of pink envelopes that spilled out of Vince’s bag when he spun around. 

“I’ll just carry these,” Howard muttered. They smelled like gummies melted on a rose. He rubbed his fingers over the sleek paper folds as they shuffled down the darkened hallway.

The school building was practically empty now. A few afterschool groups -- choir, ski club, and such -- still had meetings. (Howard was meant to be in a jazz band practice himself, but after six years he was still the founder, president, and only member, so technically everywhere he went was a jazz band meeting.) 

Those few meeting and practice rooms were illuminated, along with a couple of classrooms, but otherwise the school was quiet, the only noise the muffled tap of Howard’s loafers and Vince’s heels on the ancient wood floors. Being in here when it was so deserted always made the hair on Howard’s neck stand upright. The faded black and white photographs and oil paint portraits on the walls from long-gone classes suddenly screamed for his attention, pressuring Howard to feel the true weight of the centuries on this place. Vince’s hand was still on his elbow, and Howard pressed it into his side.

He paused outside one classroom, its overhead lights still burning. Despite the sun setting fiery orange over the buildings outside, a man sat hunched over a desk inside, scribbling away at a pile of student reports. He had a thick mustache, wire-rimmed gold glasses, and wispy brown hair. If he stood up straight, he might, once, have been as tall as Howard, but no one had seen him do that in at least a decade. The plaque by the door read, _Geography - Moon_.

Howard stopped, waiting to see if his dad would look up, wave, gesture for him to come in and talk, but Thomas Moon only glared down at his desk with a defeated expression and finger-combed his mustache.

“Come on, Howard,” Vince said gently. “Let’s go home, yeah?”

_Home._

If one were to check the academy’s file on Howard Moon, they would have discovered a great many things, including two aliases, several reports of harassment from female classmates, and a long letter from an academic advisor who summed up his opinion of Howard as, “bright, but hopeless.” The file would also list Howard’s address as a house a short distance away from campus. It would note that Howard lived with his father, T. Moon, and that Howard rode his bicycle to school each day. 

Aside from the complaints and the advisor’s letter, Howard’s file was full of lies. 

Officially, Howard lived at home with his dad, but the truth was more complicated. He didn’t know how to live in that house since his mom left, and as far as he could tell, his dad didn’t either. There was never a choice made for him to move, out, not deliberately. 

Instead, it happened like this: one night, Howard went over to Vince’s dorm room to watch a film. They both fell asleep to the soothing sounds of Danish cinema, propped up against the wall on Vince’s single bed, and when Howard woke up, it was to sunlight streaming through the window, a blue screen on the telly, and a puddle of Vince’s drool on his chest. 

Howard had grabbed his bike and rushed home in time for breakfast, armed with a multicolored selection of excuses and apologies, including some he’d borrowed from Vince’s repertoire. He crashed through the door, nonsense words about a magpie making off with his bike chain tumbling off his tongue, and found his dad seated at the kitchen table, sedately reading the paper, having made toast and tea for one. 

That night, Howard slept at Vince’s again. And every night since.

The dormitory was across the lawn from the main building, and a few boys transformed it into an impromptu football pitch almost every evening. They dashed across the field, half-clothed, and a few called out hellos to Vince or shouted at him to come join them. Vince waved at them, and Howard did too, ignoring their blank stares. It was getting dark out. If the sun were still out, they would have recognized him.

Vince’s room was at the very top of the dorms, converted from an old attic space, with wildly sloping walls and a single, porthole-shaped window that overlooked the city. Even though he’d been sleeping there for years, Howard still thought of it as Vince’s room, because it was. Everything about the room screamed _Vince_ , from the brightly patterned swaths of fabric draped across every surface to the piles of glue, glitter, and sequins gathering in in the corners. The room’s sole desk, intended for hours of diligent study, was occupied instead by an antique sewing machine, and Vince’s wardrobe overflowed from the dresser to colonize the walls and paint-spattered floor.

The room was dimly lit in the evenings by several strings of fairy lights and a single sad lamp on the desk, and it smelled perpetually of that strange incense Vince had purchased from an older boy who sometimes skulked around campus, selling odds and ends he hid in the folds of his robe. 

(It also smelled, very much, like a space that was occupied by two teenage boys who owned, among other things, socks, but Howard and Vince, having lived in that soupy air for so long, were immune to noticing this.)

As soon as they got inside, Vince flopped backward onto his bed, bag and all. The jolt sent a cascade of envelopes spilling out across the quilt and onto the hardwood floor again, and Howard sighed, knowing he’d be the one picking them up. He set his own brown leather satchel in the corner with his other things -- a few jazz records, propped against the wall, a wicker basket with stationary items, and a stack of neatly folded uniform trousers and plain white button-downs. A pile of Vince’s old clothes, all either outgrown or out of fashion, lay covered by a spare quilt nearby, forming a sort of second bed for the nights one or the other of them didn’t feel like sharing, but it never saw much use. 

Vince lay sprawled diagonal across the single bed, arms and legs splayed out like a starfish. His head dangled over the edge of the mattress, his ragged brown hair so stiff with products that it barely shifted, even when his whole face was upside down. His blue eyes traced Howard’s movements as he stooped to scoop up the mess of pink envelopes and folded notes sealed with heart-shaped stickers.

Howard shuffled through them, looking at the handwriting -- a dozen loopy renditions of Vince’s name, plus a few scratchier ones, the familiar unreadable scrawl of teenage boys. That wasn’t surprising. Even when he didn’t kit himself out in skirts and mascara, Vince always had a few boys looking at him out the corners of their eyes, confused or plain intrigued. 

“Where do you want me to put all these?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Vince scooted himself up the bed to punch the pillow before he dropped his head into it. “Rip ‘em up, I guess.”

“Rip them up?” Howard’s tiny eyes strained to widen. “ _All_ of them?”

Vince shrugged. “Sure. Answer’s no, anyway. It’s not like I’m going to write each of ‘em a note back to say as much.” He paused, tilting his head as an idea occurred to him. “Unless you think I could use them for something. Cut the words out and make a collage, could be genius. I could put it on my sketchbook.”

“I don’t think the original writers would appreciate that much.”

“Hmm, maybe not, yeah.” Vince wrinkled his nose. “Not everyone wants to be art.” 

Howard glanced down at the envelopes in his hands again. They weren’t for him. They were personal, private feelings, deep words from pretty girls fooled by Vince’s style rather than Howard’s obvious substance. 

But Vince wasn’t going to be using them. He’d given them to Howard, practically.

“Shove over,” he told Vince, sitting the edge of the bed. Vince wormed around a bit, barely moving, until Howard finally gave up and lay down pressed against his side. He ran his finger down the back of the first envelope and unfolded the letter. Even if they weren’t for him, he could pretend they were for a minute. That wouldn’t hurt anything, would it?

The first one was a poem, an ode to Vince’s hair and lips, and Howard winced. Even if he turned it backwards and upside down, he couldn’t convince himself that was for him. Crumpling it up, he tossed it toward the overflowing bin by the desk.

His second attempt was even worse than the first one. This girl had simply written Vince’s name over and over again, decorated with glitter glue and holographic stickers. Howard had glitter down his front and coating the palms of both hands as soon as he opened it.

The third note made him pause. It was actually a full page of neat, orderly handwriting in plain blue ink. Addressed to Vince, it proposed a list of logical reasons why the author and Vince ought to attend the dance together. Howard’s eyes fell to the signature, and his hands shook.

“Vince,” he whispered. Vince was playing with a bit of string. Howard nudged their shoulders together. “ _Vince_. This one’s from Hannah Jones.”

“Yeah? Brilliant.” Vince didn’t sound like he thought it was brilliant. Vince sounded like he’d just been told that their annual school assembly on the dangers of papercuts had been increased in length from half an hour to an all day event.

Howard was struck by a fierce desire to punch him. Hannah Jones was, no doubt, the prettiest girl in Upper Sixth. She had creamy white skin and long blonde hair, like a waterfall of golden cream. On top of that, she was actually _interesting_. She played three different instruments in the school’s chamber orchestra and spoke both French and Welsh. In his corner of the room, Howard had an entire leatherbound notebook in which he had written the words “Hannah Moon” on every page in every style he could think of.

Vince wound the bit of string around his index fingers, then tied the end in a knot. Folding his hands together, he spread them out to form a cat’s cradle. His expression was flat. 

“What’s wrong with you, little man?” Howard asked, bumping their shoulders together again. “I thought you’d be excited about all this. Music, dark corners, bright colored lights and fancy clothes -- a dance is just your thing, isn’t it? Don’t you want to go?”

“Yeah! Of course.” Vince’s grin was back, just that easy. He squirmed on the bed, knocking his bony hip into Howard’s stomach. “Dances are genius. I’ve got about _twenty_ ideas for outfits, just today. I’ve been looking forward to this since the first day I left the jungle. Bryan was all,” Vince’s voice shifted down a register, going stiff, “ _Vince, my boy, you have to get a real education_ , and I said,” his voice ran back up the scale, squeaky, like a cockney ragamuffin in an old novel, “ _Screw that, Bryan, I want to stay out here and be wild like the monkey men_. But then Bryan told me, _When you finish school, they hold a ball to celebrate_ , and that was it. I was hooked. It’s been school for me ever since.”

Howard could feel the corners of his mouth twitching. He loved Vince’s ridiculous stories about the jungle, and he was dying to ask what happened next, but no. He couldn’t be so easily seduced by a bit of tale. 

“Then why not pick one of these girls to go with, if they’re asking?” He asked, then added quickly, “Not Hannah, of course, but one of the others.”

“I would like to go,” Vince said quietly. He put his palms back together, then pulled them apart. The string stretched between his fingers formed a lace heart. “The girls are nice enough, but… I guess I’m waiting for someone to ask me. Someone particular, I mean.”

Howard stared. Someone _particular_? If Howard didn’t know better, he’d think Vince was saying he actually liked someone. Someone at their school? Howard wracked his memories, trying to think of who he’d seen Vince talk to recently, who he’d seen Vince smile at. It was a difficult exercise -- every time Howard saw Vince, he was smiling. Every conversation he had with others, he’d always cut it off abruptly when he saw Howard walking toward him. No matter how Howard prodded the idea, he couldn’t think of anyone Vince treated differently from everyone else.

The idea formed into a twisting, sour knot at the center of Howard’s stomach. He and Vince practically lived in each other’s pockets. They sometimes, mistakenly, wore one another’s uniforms to class. If Vince actually liked someone, Howard couldn’t imagine how he would have missed the signs.

“Who’re you asking, then?” 

Vince’s inquiry snapped Howard back into the present with a, “Hm? Oh.” He hadn’t actually thought about it much. He’d had the vague idea that he and Vince might go as mates, if no girl had the courage to ask him, but Vince was right, Howard could take the initiative instead. 

Yes, that was what he’d meant to do, actually. Howard was a go-getter, a maverick. He wasn’t the sort to mope around Vince’s room weeping over love letters from little girls. He was going to take charge, take what he wanted from the world.

“I haven’t quite decided yet,” he told Vince honestly. “There are so many candidates. Good candidates. I may have to ask a few different girls, you know, so no one’s disappointed.”

Vince let out a little huff of a laugh that soon became a full giggle. “Come off it. You’ve got girls breaking down the door, have you?”

“I have!”

“Where are they? I haven’t seen them.”

“Well, you’ve scared them off.”

“Me?”

“Oh yes, they come up and tell me about it all day. _That Vince, with his pointy shoes and his witchy ways. I’m worried he’ll curse me if I confess my love to you._ ”

Vince was cackling now, kicking those same pointy shoes into Howard’s ankles as he shook the bed, until Howard was smiling too, delighted to see tears of mirth in the corners of Vince’s eyes. Vince swiped the moisture away with black-painted fingernails, but never stopped grinning up at Howard from the pillow.

“So, what, you need me to run off and sleep in the woods a few nights? Give you some space to sort through all your admirers without my witchy face?”

“No, no. If your face is too much for them they’re too weak for me. No, what Howard Moon needs is a real woman.” As Howard said it, he knew it was true. Of course. That was exactly the problem, wasn’t it? “These girls are too gentle, too frail. I need an adventuring partner, someone with a backbone, the kind of person who will have my back when it comes to the crunch.”

Vince tilted his head toward Howard, lips curved in a smile and fringe dusting into his blue eyes. He must have put on makeup today, though Howard hadn’t noticed it before. Otherwise, how would his eyes look so blue, and his lips so pink? “Yeah?” Vince murmured, out of breath from laughing. “Who you going to ask like that, then?”

“Mrs. Gideon.”

Vince’s face fell like an ice sheet in the tundra. Avalanche. “ _Mrs. Gideon?_ The _biology_ teacher?”

“The very same, sir.”

“Are you fucking with me right now, Howard?” Vince propped himself up on his elbows and then turned to his side, looming half on top of Howard on the bed, staring down at him as he chewed at his lower lip. “You can’t be serious.” His eyes darted over Howard’s features, and Howard didn’t flinch.

Vince looked even paler that usual, practically glowing white in the dim illumination of the fairy lights. Outside their little window, sunset had faded into deep blue night. “You’ve gone wrong.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Howard snapped. He tried to squirm away, but Vince’s hand was resting on his chest, fingers toying with the collar of his jacket. Vince’s face was alarmingly serious.

“I don’t think teachers go to dances with students, Howard. Bit frowned on, innit?”

“I’m of legal age,” Howard protested. “And I was never in her class, anyway!”

“Don’t think that matters.” Vince’s eyes met his, fingers tugging almost compulsively at Howard’s lapel. His gaze dropped, briefly, toward Howard’s mouth, then flicked away. He collapsed back, rolling onto the pillow again. “She’s still a teacher, and you’re not even graduated yet.”

“But I will be,” Howard countered. “I’m a man now. You wouldn’t understand now, but when you get to be my age--”

“I’m _three months_ younger than you!”

“When you get to be my age, well, things gain new meanings, Vince. New perspectives.” Howard stared up at the slanted wooden beams of the ceiling, considering the dark rings above the bed. He and Vince often saw shapes in them -- a rampaging llama, or a monkey god -- but now they took on new dimensions. That one, it could be a box of sweets. The one beside it was a bouquet of flowers, or a mixtape. Yes, that was it. “I’ll woo her,” he said confidently. “You’ll see, Vince. Howard Moon is a man who knows how to win a lady over.”

“Sure he is,” Vince muttered, rolling over again to face the door. 

It was strange to see Vince sulking -- obviously jealous of Howard’s great idea -- but now that Howard had a plan, he was running out of time to execute it. The dance was only a week away. If he was going to organize an entire campaign of pitching woo to Mrs. Gideon, he’d need to start tomorrow. 

He leapt from the bed, going to rummage in his corner for a notebook and a couple of biros Vince hadn’t yet nicked or chewed. Couldn’t make a plan without writing it down after all. Howard settled in, cross-legged, on the pile of clothes.

“Flowers,” he murmured to himself, writing the word on the first line of a blank page. Then, “Chocolates.”

“Are you sure she’s not allergic?”

Vince was grumpy, not worth listening to, but he might be right. Howard crossed out “chocolates,” and wrote “sweets.” “What else do ladies like?” He wondered aloud.

“Privacy,” Vince grumbled. “Restraining orders.” Howard ignored him.

“Music” went on the next line, and then, inspired, Howard added, “musicians.” He continued down the list, adding a few more tweaks along the way, until he had a respectable account. It looked like this:

_Flowers  
 ~~Chocolates~~  
Sweets  
Music  
Musicians  
Pencil cases  
The French?_

He’d stretched it a little at the end there, but that was okay. He had a decent starting place, at least. From across the room, he heard a sigh, then the sound of paper crumpling, thudding into the bin.

“You know,” Vince said suddenly, “this whole situation reminds me of something that happened in the jungle when I was a boy.”

Howard straightened at those words, notebook slipping down his leg, forgotten. “Oh?” He tried not to sound too eager. He loved Vince’s jungle boy stories, but they were shy things, woven in the darkness. If he flashed too much attention on them, they’d often vanish.

“Yeah, although being a leopard, Jahouli handled courtship a bit differently than you and me.”

“I imagine so.” Howard chuckled and crept toward the bed, leaving his list behind. “Was it messy?”

“ _So_ messy.” Vince’s eyes were like lasers as he watched Howard crawl onto the bed beside him once again. He smiled, satisfied, and squirmed closer to Howard. “Would you like to hear it?”

“Yeah,” Howard whispered, and that was all Vince needed to launch into the story.

-

_Once, when Jahouli was still a cub himself, he fell in love with another leopard. She was called Karla._

_Karla? What sort of name is that for a leopard?_

_She was a rescue leopard, okay? Wildlife release and all that. Do you want the story or not, Howard?_

_Right. Go on, then._

_Like I was sayin’, Jahouli loved Karla, and they did all the usual leopard courting things. He would bring her warm, fresh kills and let her eat all the tastiest parts first, and they’d play together, or they’d have a lie down in the sun, and things were fine. But Jahouli was still young and all, still learning his way around, so he bought a motorbike, said, “See ya, babes” to Karla, and roared off to Edinburgh to get a bachelor flat for a few months._

_He had a wild time out there, but eventually he decided to come home. Jahouli was tired from all the boozing and partying all night, and he started missing Karla -- and Bryan, of course -- so he came back to the jungle._

_At first, he was nervous around Karla, because she’d grown up over the summer, too, and she was well fit for a leopard, but all the other animals in the forest really cheered Jahouli on. They were like, “Come on, man! She clearly loves you! You’re basically married already.”_

_So Jahouli went to Karla, and he told her, “Karla, I love you! Let’s be married tomorrow.”_

_But Karla said no. While Jahouli was away, Karla’s heart had moved on to another. Jahouli was crushed. He sulked away down to the riverbank to cry and listen to The Smiths._

_While he was weeping into a small bush over “How Soon Is Now?,” Jahouli overheard Karla on the other side of the river with a friend of hers, a lady gorilla named Ireme. Karla was telling Ireme how she never really loved Jahouli, the minx, and she was head over heels for old Nyoka, the snake. Their love was very forbidden, of course. I mean, a leopard and a reptile? Imagine that. But Jahouli had inspired Karla and she’d decided to go for it. She loved Nyoka, and she was going to ask him out._

_Hearing that, Jahouli stopped crying. This whole time, it was all a lie. She never loved him back at all. So, Jahouli gathered himself, turned off his Walkman, and began to search the forest until he found himself at the door of Nyoka the snake himself._

_When Nyoka answered the door, Jahouli murdered him._

_What?_

_Murdered him in warm blood. Slurped him down like a scaley bit of pot noodle. Swallowed him whole._

_But what about Karla?_

_Karla was a bit miffed, for sure, but she got over it. She and Jahouli got married after all, a couple weeks later when Jahouli got over his stomachache from eating so much in one sitting._

_So it all ended happy ever after, after all._

_Nah, not really. Three months later, Karla served Jahouli with divorce papers. She ran out on him and started hooking up with Ireme instead, left Jahouli to raise two cubs on his own. He had to start a second job at Tescos to cover the cost of the baby formula, least until Bryan came along and appointed Jahouli as my new nanny._

_But that’s a story for another night, Howard._

_Howard?_

_Are you asleep?_

_G’night, Howard._


	2. Chapter 2

“ _Howard Moon_?”

Howard’s head jerked up, like a meerkat with a wispy mustache emerging from his burrow, on the alert. There was no mistaking what he’d just heard. A _girl_ had said his name somewhere within a hundred meter radius. Howard stopped pinching himself for a moment and looked around, ignoring the strange glances being thrown his way by passing students. Back pressed to the wall, he edged over to the nearest corner, stealthy-like, and peeked around the edge.

Siobhan O’Connor was standing with her arms folded, frowning at Vince as he bobbed his head. They looked almost like sisters with Vince turned slightly sideways -- similar hairstyles, though Siobhan’s was darker, and both of them in uniform skirts for the day. Vince’s knee-highs were off kilter, one white and stretched tall, and the other grey, slouched around his ankle. He rubbed his legs together like a grasshopper, scratching an itch.

“Are you shitting me, Vince?” Siobhan demanded. “That creep? Still?”

Vince ducked his head a bit, smiling. “What d’ya mean, ‘still’?”

“I’m going to tell you this now because I care about you, Vince, right? It ain’t cute anymore.” Vince’s smile faltered, but Siobhan blathered on. “I guess it was endearing when we were kids, you taking pity on that guy, but you’re past due to let it go now. Howard Moon is _well_ hopeless, and like, probably a stalker. If you don’t cut him loose before we graduate, he’ll drag you down with him, and you’ll end up as a… a shopkeeper. Or a bin man.”

Vince laughed, but the sound was sharp. It was a jagged, icy sort of laughter, a noise Howard had never heard from him before. “A bin man? That’s funny, Siobhan. You’re brilliant.”

‘Brilliant’ fell flat. Vince called a lot of things ‘brilliant’ or ‘genius.’ Two days ago, he’d remarked to Howard that urinal cakes were, in fact, ‘genius.’ A week before that, he’d proclaimed, “Brilliant!” at the sight of a hat in a shop window made out of three different patterns of animal print. It wasn’t hard to earn praise from Vince Noir. 

This particular ‘brilliant’ was not, in fact, praise. It was too two-dimensional, too hard-edged. For a second as he said it, Vince had stopped smiling.

Siobhan didn’t seem to notice any of that. “Just think about what I said, yeah?”

“Sure.” Vince shrugged. “I’ll think about it a lot.” Liar. Vince never thought of anything a lot.

Howard waited, pressed into the corner, and watched Siobhan leave. Nothing she’d said was new to him. Everyone underestimated Howard’s potential at the academy, and that was how it had always been. It was fine, or so he told himself. Howard’s taste, his whole existence, was simply too high concept for most of the students and teachers to understand. They’d see, someday. Someday soon. 

Once Siobhan had stalked off toward the soccer pitch, Vince headed in the opposite direction. In a few steps, he rounded the corner, where he nearly collided with Howard.

“Hey, watch it!” Vince exclaimed in the seconds before his brain cell fired off a spark of recognition. His sharp features softened, lips curving. “Oh, it’s only you, Howard. Alright?”

“Not cutting me loose yet, are you?” Howard muttered. Vince’s only response came in the form of wide blue eyes and a distracted hum. Despite his promise to Siobhan, he’d already wiped the conversation from his mind. “Big plans for the rest of today?”

Vince groaned in response, leaning into the wall. “Two of my classes decided to have quizzes tomorrow. Two! These teachers are a bunch of sadists, I swear. It’s like they were never in school themselves. They just sprung fully formed from a cabbage with little glasses on and a pencil behind one ear.” 

“I don’t think that’s right,” Howard said, but he was frowning. He couldn’t stop himself from picturing his father, pushing back the leaves of an enormous cabbage to step out, a grown man in a tweed suit with a moustache and a smudge of graphite across one scruffy cheek. Even though Howard had seen baby pictures of his dad as a kid, he couldn’t deny the image was a convincing one. 

Vince sighed and leaned into the wall beside him. “Whatever. How about you? What’ve you been off on all day? I couldn’t find you at lunch.”

“Nothing much. Business, you know.”

“Business? You running board meetings and stuff now?”

“Yes, I’m very… busy,” Howard lied. “Getting ready to graduate, I have to field all these calls, all these universities and employers begging for my attention. _Please, Howard Moon. We’ll give you a scholarship. We’ll give you a private suite. We’ll give you a Lordship_.”

The joke worked. Vince began to grin again, then fell into giggles, gasping, “Lord Moon,” to himself and almost tipping over in an attempt to bow. 

Howard felt the addictive wash of relief as Vince laughed. In truth, he’d spent most of his class time for the day workshopping ideas for how to woo Mrs. Gideon in a battered notebook. He’d left a bouquet of flowers from the park on her desk in the morning, then hidden behind her classroom door, but Gideon had begun sneezing uproariously the moment she touched them and fled into the hall to find a trash can, muttering about allergies.

So, flowers were out, apparently.

Howard had also spent his lunch period in the halls, watching Gideon as she lectured while he pretended to use a nearby drinking fountain. He wasn’t ashamed of his actions. No, everything he did was on the up and up. He wasn’t spying or stalking, merely gathering intelligence for use in his mission. After all, he only had a few days to go before the formal.

But, after overhearing what Siobhan said, he was feeling a mite self-conscious. Vince didn’t need to know what Howard was doing at all hours, after all. It wasn’t any of his business who Howard stalked.

“Can you help me revise tonight, then? I’ve got no chance at these quizzes otherwise.’ Vince twirled a lock of hair around one finger. He listed forward, toward Howard, as he spoke, and a speck of glitter on his cheek caught the light. 

Howard reached up and swiped it away with his thumb, then showed the offending metallic bit to Vince. “Sure.” 

\--

It never bothered Howard, helping Vince study, because he’d long since given up on actually helping Vince. Early on in their friendship, Howard had tried to actually knuckle down and teach Vince something. He’d prepared entire lectures on good note-taking, how to sort test answers using process of elimination, and the best structure for argumentative essays. In the midst of one particularly long speech on the art of precisely bubbling one’s answers, he’d looked down to find Vince doodling some type of half-fish creature with seaweed for hair.

When Howard tried, they both wound up frustrated, so he no longer tried. Instead, helping Vince revise meant putting on _The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars_ and climbing onto the bed with their books and pencils. They sat side by side, backs propped against the headboard, Howard with his legs stretched out and toes wiggling in argyle socks, and Vince with his feet folded up beneath his thighs, his knobby knee emerging from the hem of his stockings to nudge Howard’s thigh when he squirmed, humming under his breath.

Vince didn’t revise so much as he hummed, sang, wriggled along with the beat of “Starman,” and doodled lightning bolts and spaceships in the margins of his notebook, but somehow it worked. He was quiet, still, and focused -- all these terms being relative when Vince Noir was the subject of them -- and, miraculously, his exam results were usually fine afterward. Howard had once seen a teacher bump Vince’s score from a 48 to a 52 because she liked his drawings, though, so he was never sure how much of the scores was Vince absorbing knowledge versus simply relaxing and flowing with his natural luck.

 _Ziggy_ hit the end of side one, and Howard flipped him over, then settled back into the bed. The tape ended, and Vince got up, flipped it over again. It clicked off side one again, and it was Howard’s turn. 

Between his book and the rotating pattern of flipping the cassette, Howard and Vince fell into a rhythm, and Howard lost track of how many times they’re restarted the same album -- one of the few music choices they agreed on -- until his eyes began to ache. 

He was squinting down at the tiny print on the pages in his lap, pulling the book closer to his face to make out the words in the dim light, and that was when he realized it had gotten dark. The sun was down, leaving only the rainbow and white flashes of Vince’s fairy lights to read by, and Bowie was once again crooning about electric eyes. Howard glanced up at the cuckoo clock mounted in the attic rafters and found the hands at four and eight. The clock was never right, but it was wrong predictably, and Howard did the math in his head. It was five minutes till eight at night.

Howard nudged his shoulder into Vince’s and watched the smaller boy jump, the flick of his wrist smearing graphite over a shaded drawing of a flamingo in platform boots. “We missed dinner.” As soon as Howard said it, he felt a pang in his stomach, the reality of not eating for eight hours sinking in. “Are there any snacks in the cupboard?”

“Check by the TV.” Vince rummaged around in his bedside table for a second before triumphantly pulling out a pink crayon, then turned back to his artwork.

Slipping off the bed, Howard kneeled down to dig through the cabinets beneath their telly. Hidden under a few layers of tulle and scarves, something crinkled in the lower drawer, and Howard excavated to find the packages.

“Wine gums, jelly babies, Whispa,” Howard listed, frowning. “Jaffa cakes, Hobnobs… Is there any food in here at all?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Vince scoffed. “Should be some custard creams in there as well. Toss them up here if you find ‘em.”

“I mean _real_ food, Vince. Crisps or something, at least. Maybe a carrot?” Vince blinked at him, uncomprehending, and Howard sighed. Beneath the layer of biscuits was more candy, some of it so old that the once squishy Haribo was like a bottle-shaped rock. “Where did you even get all this?”

“Girls, mostly.” Vince shrugged at Howard’s puzzled expression. “Can’t help it, can I? They can smell the helpless orphan on me. A girl gets around me for ten minutes, next thing I know she’s shoving biscuits at me.”

“I don’t think the impulse is maternal,” Howard muttered. His own mother had certainly had those instincts toward Vince, maybe even more than she had them with Howard. She’d never made so many fresh meals as she did when Vince would pop by for dinner, and she’d always sent him back to the dorm with a box of leftover as well, but in retrospect Howard could never be sure of her motivations in that. Maybe she knew she was leaving, even then. Maybe she felt guilty.

Either way, the fifteen year old schoolgirls apparently showering Vince in raspberry bootlaces probably had more interest in his heart than his health.

“Right.” Howard slapped the cabinet shut. “Come on. We’re going down to the dining hall.”

Vince groaned, squirming around on the bed. “But dinner’s over already! I’ve gotten all comfy here. I was just thinking of taking my socks off.”

Howard rolled his eyes. “It’s just down the stairs. We’ll go see if there’s anything edible and bring it back, then you can take off all the clothes you want.” Vince scrunched his face up, and Howard added, “When was the last time you ate a sandwich? Oatmeal? A bit of cucumber?”

“I put cucumber on my eyes the other day,” Vince volunteered. “It looked well creepy. Made my eyebrows smell like salad cream, though.” He pursed his lips. “Not sure it did much else, though. Maybe you have to be older.”

“Did you _eat_ the cucumbers?”

“After they touched my eye juices? Gross.”

Sighing, Howard took Vince by the elbow and hauled him off the bed. “That’s it. Let’s go.”

“But what about my exams?”

“You’ll never pass your exams if you faint of malnutrition,” Howard groused, nudging Vince toward the door. “You have to feed your _mind_ , little man. It takes more than sugar to fuel success. You need protein, veg, maybe a bit of potato.”

He was starting to sound like his dad now. He was also, maybe, starting to recite his mum’s recipe for shepherd’s pie. Howard licked his lips, thinking of it. Remembering how she’d tried to feed Vince when they were younger must have triggered the memory, and now he could practically smell the rich, meaty scent of lamb and potatoes warming in the oven. 

By the time they made it across the school lawn, it felt like there was an ouroboros eating a hole through Howard’s stomach, he was so hungry. Predictably, the dining hall’s staid wooden doors were shut tight, but they’d never be locked. In a school with a dormitory overflowing with teenagers, closing the kitchens overnight was a losing battle and could only result in mass theft and messy raids. Howard planted his heels and tugged one of the heavy doors open, propping it with his shoulder and standing back to let Vince slip through first.

The hall was empty. Howard had held a vague hope that a cook might still be lurking around, cleaning up. If they’d caught someone, Vince could give them the ol’ bushbaby eyes, and maybe they could get some fried eggs or half a leftover sandwich at least, but they’d left it too late, and it was only the two of them in the hollow room.

Vince wandered off, his heels clicking echoes on the stone floor, distracted by the sight of an ornate carving on the room’s pillars. Howard hunched his shoulders and slinked toward the serving tables. Over the mantle of the building’s ancient, drafty fireplace, was a painting of the academy’s founder, and Howard had always hated it. Especially alone in here, he felt like the man’s blue eyes were boring holes into the back of his skull.

Thanks to yet another round of terrible, panicked health initiatives rolling through the community, the school had trimmed its evening snack offerings once again. The only food left out for Howard to pick from was a fruit bowl with a couple spotty apples, a banana more brown than yellow, and a pile of satsumas. It wasn’t exactly a great feast, but he _had_ been looking for vitamins. He began to load up his arms and blazer pockets with as many citruses as he could carry.

“What’s all that?” Vince asked, edging closer with a distrustful eye toward the fruit. “What do we need a dozen satsumas for? They’ll just go rotten in a day or two.”

“Ammunition,” Howard muttered. “I’m going to chase you around the room and lob them at your skull when you forget to pick up your dirty clothes.” It was a ridiculous image, but it was better than telling Vince he was worried about keeping him from getting scurvy. If Howard so much as said that word, they’d be off all night on a tangent about pirate fashion that would inevitably spiral into Vince’s eyes twinkling as he speculated on whether a peg leg or an eye patch had more potential as a hot new accessory. 

There was a twinkle in Vince’s eyes as it was, and that was when it dawned on Howard that his joke may have created a monster anyway. The poor satsumas wouldn’t know what hit them if Vince decided to start playing tag with them after all. Neither would Vince’s bedroom walls.

Howard finished filling his jacket pockets, then his trouser pockets, and began tucking the last few remaining satsumas into the crook of his arm. Somehow, Vince unearthed one pristine, yellow-skinned banana from among the wreckage of the fruit bowl. He tossed it from hand to hand, eying Howard’s armful of oranges with an expression Howard didn’t like the look of, no sir. Rarely was Vince anything one might call _calculating_ , but when he was…

“Help, Howard,” the boy suddenly yelped, staggering to the side. “Ah, the malnutrition’s set in! My legs, they’ve gone weak!” 

Howard didn’t have time to do anything but stare, aghast, as Vince faked a stumble around him, then _threw_ himself at Howard’s back. 

Small as the other boy might be, he wasn’t particularly light. Vince still liked the occasional game of footie on the week end, running around the lawn in ridiculous little shorts with other lads while Howard lurked beneath a tree, nose to a book, tiny eyes peeping out over the page’s edge to watch. Vince was all compact muscle underneath the baby fat that still clung to his cheeks and those gauzy, glittery clothes he put on most days. The solid weight of him slammed into Howard’s back, forcing the air from his lungs. A couple of the satsumas dropped from his arm, rolling across the stone floor as Howard bent nearly double, and Vince took advantage of the opportunity to climb him. Moments like this, Howard had little doubt the boy had been raised by monkeys.

Vince’s wiry arms clung around Howard’s throat, his thighs and calves digging into Howard’s sides, stretches of pale skin and scattered dark hairs visible in the gap between his skirt and his stockings. The socks were slippery, and Vince’s legs dug in harder, squeezing Howard’s ribs. With an _oof_ of breath, he gave up resisting and dropped the rest of his satsumas, tucking his hands under Vince’s knees to haul him up into a more secure piggyback. 

There was no point in fighting it, really. If Vince wanted to be carted about, he was more than capable of making it happen, regardless of whether Howard wanted to. 

“I’m not your pack donkey!” Howard grumbled in protest, but Vince only wrapped his legs tight around Howard’s waist and criss-crossed his arms over Howard’s chest. 

He pressed his face into Howard’s neck, warm breath gushing over his ear, and for a moment, Howard froze, suppressing a shiver at that extra layer of intimacy. Lips tracing the shell of Howard’s ear, Vince whispered, “Giddyup.” 

And then he dug his pointy fucking _heels_ into Howard’s ribs, the little tit.

Howard’s grip on Vince’s knees tightened. “You want a ride?” He asked, low and grinning. “I’ll give you a ride.” And he bolted for the front door, Vince’s delighted giggle bouncing like a rubber ball through his chest.

-

By the time they got back to the attic, they were both out of breath -- Vince from cackling like a madman, and Howard from hauling his mate across the field and up three flights of stairs. Howard dumped Vince onto the bed by flopping backwards onto it, like a hippo shaking off a cattle bird in the river mud, and then dropped a couple of the satsumas from his pockets onto the bedspread beside Vince’s sprawled legs. His skirt had ridden up, flashing a sliver of red pants beneath, and Howard quickly looked away.

“Cheers.” Vince grinned and reached for the fruit, disassembling the skin easily with his thumbnails as he sat up, crossing his legs, once more as decent as Vince ever got.

With a huff that was not quite _you’re welcome_ , Howard arranged the remaining citrus into a coiled up scarf beside their telly, a clutch of orange eggs kept warm in a silk nest. He selected two for himself and then snagged his Dostoevsky from the corner, settling back into the bed with the book and his snack. 

Silence fell, aside from Vince’s occasional rustle. When Howard read a good book, the rest of the world faded into the background, and sounds became muffled. He was only vaguely conscious of the mattress shifting when Vince got off the bed. The hum and clack of the sewing machine and Vince’s tuneless singing were the usual soundtrack to Howard’s hobbies, and he paid them no mind, immersed in the travails of Prince Myshkin.

The sewing lamp clicked off, deepening the darkness, and Howard’s eyes began to ache from the strain of reading under fairy lights. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he put the novel aside and tried to pull himself back from the post-story sensation that his brain was swimming through the air. In front of the wardrobe, Vince was half-dressed, a Piccasso of awkward angles in his vest and pants as he picked through a pile of clothes for reasonably clean pajamas. 

Howard glanced at the cuckoo clock overhead and realized they were stumbling toward midnight. Standing, he unearthed his own pajamas from the corner and changed quickly while Vince popped down the hall to the communal bathroom. Howard passed him in the hall coming back when he took his own turn, and they nodded to one another, both smiling at the odd game of pretending to be distant strangers.

Vince was in bed already when Howard returned, curled on his side to face the door. A bar of light fell across his face as Howard slipped into the room, illuminating dark lashes fanned across high cheekbones. Thinking Vince was asleep, Howard closed the door carefully before creeping around the end of the bed, worming in on the other side of the narrow mattress. He lay on his back, staring up at the shadows that peaked the vaulted ceiling.

“Tell me a story.”

Vince’s voice in the darkness made him jump. “What? I thought you were asleep already, little man.”

Flopping onto his back, Vince nudged his shoulder into Howard’s. “Not sleepy. Tell me a story ‘oward.” Despite his claims, he was clearly knackered, slurring through Howard’s name like he was still learning to speak human tongues. 

“I haven’t got any stories. You’re the story teller. You’re the one that grew up in a jungle.”

“So tell me a story about me.”

Howard rolled his eyes. Of course Vince was vain enough to want to hear about himself, even at bedtime. Howard _did_ know a few of Vince’s stories from the jungle. Some of them, like how he’d gotten his surname or how he’d learned to swim, were the sort of fun, happy little tales that Vince told often, even to their classmates. Others didn’t get as warm of a reception from strangers. Some stories, Howard knew, Vince had never told still, not even to him.

The idea of recounting one of Vince’s own life stories back to him like a strange game of telephone made Howard’s stomach turn. He didn’t want to mess such things up, couldn’t trust himself not to clumsily fumble the conclusion to one of those tales. That left only one option -- he’d have to make something up.

Staring at the ceiling, Howard fumbled for the threads of his novel and the shape of Vince’s life, and slowly he began to weave the two together.

-

_Once upon a time, there was a prince who lived in a vast jungle, and he was called Vince. Prince Vince._

_Was he beautiful?_

_‘Course he was. Beautiful, and popular, and well-dressed. Bit thick, though._

_Hey!_

_Shhhh. Do you want the story or not?_

_For his sixteenth birthday, the prince decided to throw an enormous ball to celebrate, and invite all the people and animals that he knew from far and wide. There would be cakes, and champagne, and a DJ who only played the hottest electro pop, and everyone would dance the night away._

_Prince Vince arranged everything himself, and he sent out flyers via all the jungle birds, and then he got to work planning his outfit. It was very elaborate, very sparkly, and he had to sew a lot himself, but it was hard to do because he kept getting interrupted._

_See, because the prince was so popular, everyone who was coming wanted to be able to dance with him at the party. As soon as the invitations came out, the requests started to pour in. Animals sent him their favorite fruits and shiny stones, and the people sent jewels and sweets and soft fabrics, and each time the prince’s staff interrupted him with a new request, he’d stop sewing and say, “Yes, of course I’ll dance with him,” and then he’d wave them away._

_When the date of the ball finally arrived, the prince was exhausted. He’d had to work through the night to finish his beautiful outfit, and his fingers cramped from sewing. Despite that, he got all dressed and did his hair -- which took most of the day -- and then put on his nicest boots and went to the party._

_He arrived fashionably late and found a line out the door that wound all the way around the venue. “What’s this?” he asked. “Isn’t there room inside?”_

_And his staff blinked at him and said, “Yes, sire, but this is the line of subjects waiting to dance with you.”_

_The line stretched on and on until the prince couldn’t see the end, but he knew he couldn’t turn them away. They all wanted to dance with him so badly, and they’d sent him such lovely gifts, so he pasted on his best smile, loaded himself up on sugar until he was bouncing, and asked a lovely lady hippopotamus for the first dance._

_She was sweet and shy, but she stepped on his toes with her big hippo feet and cracked the rhinestones on his shoes. The lion he danced with next hadn’t trimmed his claws, and they tore a patch from the prince’s belt when the lion dipped him. Even the good dancers were careless, tossing the prince about until he felt dizzy and stunned by the pop of cameras. Exhausted, he tried to take a break for a glass of punch, but he found the guests had already drank it all. They’d eaten all his food, and his eyes were heavy and his feet were blistered._

_The next dancer on his card was an ostrich ballerina named Melinda. The prince had known her since she was a chick, so he went to her and said, “Please, Melinda, can I sit down a bit? My toes are about to drop off and my shoes are falling to pieces.”_

_But Melinda stomped her long birdy legs and shrieked, “That’s not fair! Everyone else got a turn!” And so the prince sighed and held out his hand as the DJ began to play “Cars” again._

_As he danced with Melinda, dizzy and tired, the prince looked over at the long line of subjects who were still waiting to dance with him, and he realized it hadn’t gotten any shorter. It just went on and on, and the ones he’d already danced with had returned to the back of the line for another go. The food was all eaten, even the decorative parsley. The punch was drained. The decorations were in tatters, and so was the prince’s beautiful outfit, and still his subjects wouldn’t stop demanding more from him. A fight broke out in the line, an elephant and a crocodile jockeying for position._

_They didn’t care if he collapsed or if the party was ruined. They wanted him for themselves. Everyone wanted to be seen dancing with the beautiful prince, but none of them cared if the prince was happy or healthy when they did it._

_… That can’t be the end of the story, Howard._

_I’m afraid it is._

_But that’s not a bedtime story! A bedtime story’s supposed to end in happy ever after! What happens to the prince? Doesn’t someone save the day?_

_I don’t know what to tell you, Vince. That’s the end of the story. Now go to sleep._


	3. Chapter 3

Howard had his back pressed flush with the wall in the hallway. He’d wedged himself between the classroom door and a potted palm, rendering himself completely invisible to the casual passerby. (Or, at least, rendering himself a freak that no one else in the hall would dream of making eye contact with.) From this angle, he had a clear line of sight into the room next door and to the surface of Mrs. Gideon’s desk.

His eyes were trained on a lump among the papers stacked on one corner. Gideon was still seated, spectacles perched on her slim, creamy nose in a dignified fashion as she smiled and nodded to one of her last remaining students. Howard squinted at the student’s back, willing him to stop the conversation and leave, and the student stiffened, glancing around in every direction before his eyes locked on the potted palm in the hallway. 

He couldn’t see Howard, of course. Howard was a master of camouflage. But he must have seen something among the sparse fronds of the houseplant, something that made him uncomfortable. Muttering excuses to Mrs. Gideon, he shouldered his book bag and left, deliberately looking away from the potted plant as he scuttled out the doorway.

With the last student gone, Gideon rose from her seat. Her elegant, unpainted fingers traced the surface of her desk as she leaned forward to gather the student essays from the front corner, and a small frown marred her features when she felt the plasticky lump among the papers. 

Howard tensed as the moment arrived. It hadn’t been easy, this particular gesture of woo, but he had faith in it. That was why he’d gone to all the trouble of sneaking into the music room, recording himself playing his composition on several different instruments, some of which were not traditionally seen as such, and then looping them over one another to create this, no mere mixtape, but Howard Moon’s magnum opus of seduction. He’d had to bribe one of the Year Ten’s to turn it in, as well, so he’d be out of pocket money for the foreseeable future, but it would all be worth it to walk into the dance with Mrs. Gideon on his arm.

Gideon slipped the cassette out from among the essays and turned it over. Howard hadn’t labeled it, but that was on purpose. He didn’t want to spoil the mystery. Frowning, Gideon glanced around the room, then paused, staring at a battered stereo on her windowsill among a cluster of yellowing ferns in cracked pots. She stepped toward it.

“Howard!” Vince’s voice rang out in the busy hallway, and Howard whipped around to see his mate bounding toward him. His blonde-streaked hair was particularly voluminous today, and he’d ripped the academy crest off the breast of his blazer, replacing it with a Rolling Stones patch. A long string of fake pearls hung from his neck, and his twined it around his fingers absently. “What’s this? I didn’t think you knew my schedule.”

Licking his lips, Howard stalled for time. He _had_ known, at some point, that Vince had home economics right before lunch. He had even known that the home economics classroom was in the same hall as Mrs. Gideon’s room. When he’d made his plan for the day, however, he’d forgotten both of these tiny, silly, insignificant details, and now he was caught.

Vince was grinning at Howard, all bouncing energy and bright blue eyes, and any moment now Mrs. Gideon would play Howard’s tape. He needed to get Vince out of there, before he heard it. “Erm, yes. Yeah. I mean, I wanted to pop by. You know, see if you were up for… lunch?” 

It was a ridiculous question. They ate lunch together nearly every day, and Howard had never shown up to Vince’s class before, never tried to _escort_ him to the dining hall. It was, as far as Howard was concerned, a stupid and obvious lie.

But Vince looked like Howard had just told him a new vintage shop was having a grand opening a block away, and the first five customers in the door would get a free pair of snakeskin shoes. The way his face brightened made Howard’s chest ache, even more than usual, and in that moment Howard might have forgotten about Gideon. Given the chance, he might have turned his back on the classroom, extended his arm, and walked Vince like that all the way to the dining hall, skived off the rest of his classes and spent the afternoon back in the dorm, helping Vince put pins in the new shirt he was modifying, if Vince had asked him to.

A trumpet blared forth from the open doorway beside them, and Howard couldn’t resist. He whipped around to see what Gideon thought of the tape.

She stood in front of the stereo, stiff back to the door. Howard couldn’t see her expression, only that she rocked back on her heels when the bongo and theremin both mixed into the trumpet-lead melody. The song was raucous, triumphant, and Howard turned back to Vince, excited for someone’s approval.

Vince’s face was blank. No sunshine kid smile, no dazzled expression. He stared at the doorway to Gideon’s classroom, listening, and Howard knew right away that he’d fucked it up. It was a disturbing sensation, as he wasn’t sure _what_ it was that he’d just fucked up, only that he had. There was no doubt of that, not from the way Vince was looking through Gideon, at that stereo. 

Although Vince wasn’t much of a student, Howard had never blamed him for that. He was raised in the jungle, after all. He’d started school late. He was forever behind in his classes, barely scraping by in anything that wasn’t art-related, and he had a perpetual sort of wide-eyed naivety that Howard had outgrown along with diapers. Other people, meeting Vince for the first time, often looked at all these factors and decided he was harmless, pretty, and very much an idiot. Few people ever got to know him well enough to correct that first impression, but Howard knew. Vince might be a bit thick sometimes, but he wasn’t an idiot. Not where it counted.

And now, in the hallway, Howard knew there was no point in making up a new lie. There was no shiny thing in his pocket he could angle toward Vince’s eyes and distract him back into happiness. Vince could hear the tape playing in Gideon’s room as well as Howard could, and he knew exactly what was happening.

“Vince--”

The smaller boy stiffened. His smile flashed back -- not the real one, the hallway smile, the “my maths teacher is walking toward me and I can’t pretend I don’t see her” smile -- and his head tilted, eyes still blank. “Actually, I’ve changed my mind--”

“Vince,” Howard repeated, louder, but Vince only raised his voice in turn, talking over him.

“-- I’m not hungry! I’m going to go… Go. I’m going to go.” With that, Vince turned on his heel, hauled his satchel higher on his shoulder, and stalked off down the hall toward the stairs, steps clicking audibly on the tiles. 

Howard took a single lurching step forward, instinct demanding he give chase, but then hesitated. The tape stopped, cut off in the middle of the song, before it could reach the big crescendo, before Howard’s recorded voice would come through, inviting Mrs. Gideon as his date to the dance. 

The tape deck popped open, and Howard watched as Gideon reached in, pinching the side of the cassette and pulling it free. She held it in her thumb and forefinger like a soiled nappy before turning to toss it into the nearest bin. It clattered against the plastic side and slumped in among the crumpled papers, alongside Howard’s bleeding heart.

-

Vince wasn’t in the dining hall at lunch, nor did Howard see him in the halls between classes. He dragged through his school work. There wasn’t much to do in classes anyway these last weeks, aside from particularly brutal instructors insisting on a year-end quiz, and Howard did those on autopilot. He kept expecting Vince to show up. Any moment, he’d pop out from behind a corner to scold Howard for being a twat about lunch, and then they’d go back to the normal state of things, ribbing on one another as Vince tried to worm his cold fingers under Howard’s shirt and Howard fended him off while reciting a lecture about proper nutrition. 

But Vince didn’t show up, and he wasn’t in the art room when Howard tentatively ventured down that hallway. Nothing down there but the ghosts of wasted paint and shattered pottery.

Normally after classes, Howard would gather up Vince before heading back to the dormitory, but Vince was likely already in the room, having a sulk, and Howard wasn’t ready to deal with that yet. He took a detour from the art hall, swerving up to the front stairs and around the side of them, into the academy’s library.

Calling it a library was a bit of a stretch, really. It was more like a cabinet that was putting on airs. The shelves were filled with dusty, leather bound encyclopedias, all at least twenty years out of date. One narrow corner with a paisley-print straight backed chair in it purported to contain fiction by notable local authors. A tumbleweed skittered across the shelf when Howard walked past it, slumping into the chair, which groaned in protest.

Although Howard still wasn’t sure what, exactly, he had done wrong (A lie. At least on some level, he did know, but he wasn’t ready to acknowledge that, and so his brain happily skipped that groove on the record), but he did know that Vince was mad at him. It wasn’t unusual for them to fight or disagree, but typically the situation was more mutual, the blame less easily assigned.

Today, Howard was forced to consider that he had done wrong and that, if he ventured upstairs to the dorm, he’d be forced to apologize to end the fight. Apologize to Vince. Even though Howard didn’t know what he’d done wrong. (Again, he did.) So, like the brave and responsible adventurer that Howard was, he had elected to hide in the one room of the academy he was pretty sure Vince had never set foot inside.

He couldn’t apologize to Vince. He couldn’t. He didn’t even know how. After all, they’d never needed to apologize before. Even when they barely knew each other, they’d simply gotten over things, leaving the _I’m sorry_ s unspoken.

The air around Howard’s head began to waver, and he found himself staring through the wall of the library and into the kitchen of his childhood home.

-

Howard’s mum was shoving a knit hat down over his ears. She was a powerful, broad woman. Her mousy brown hair was twisted up in a bun atop her head, and she was dressed practically in dark denim and a plaid shirt. She tugged at the front of Howard’s dark blue windbreaker, making him sway on his feet before zipping it to his throat. Howard, all of eight years old but already the most serious person in most rooms, scowled.

“I don’t want to go,” he whined, even as his mother turned him by the shoulders and nudged him toward the front door.

“It’s not about what you want this time, Mr. Moon. It’s about what’s good for you -- fresh air, exercise, friendships with boys your own age instead of just your old mum.”

“But I don’t even _like_ football.” Howard’s protests fell on deaf ears. His mother opened the front door and swept him out through it like he was little more than a pile of dead leaves.

The pick-up game was happening in an empty field up the street, and Howard could hear the shouts of the older boys organizing it from the front gate. He paused with his hand on the latch, considering his options. There was a book waiting for him back in his room and a five euro note burning a hole in his pocket from his Christmas money. If he veered right instead of left, he could walk to the little shop down on the corner instead, blow his money on a candy bar and a comic book, and hide out somewhere until the game broke up and he could convince his mum it was late enough to come home. 

Howard glanced back over his shoulder. His mum had the curtain lifted and was watching him through the kitchen window. She nodded toward the vacant field. No escape. 

Several boys from the neighborhood -- and a couple girls -- were milling around the field, kicking a ball back and forth as they argued over who would be on which team and how to differentiate between the two sides. When Howard shuffled over, Brian Kant shot him a sideways look and groaned. 

“Not Moon,” the older boy exclaimed. “I won’t have it! I’d rather have the weird little fairy.”

“Alright, then,” Peter Brown agreed, smirking. “The fairy’s all yours.” Brian did _not_ like that, and the argument erupted again. 

Howard jammed his hands in his pockets, shoulders up around his ears to combat the emotional discomfort along with the biting winter wind. He followed the line of Brian and Peter’s accusatory fingers across the field and paused, staring. Crouched in the grass near one of the impromptu goals was a child Howard had never seen before. 

At first, he thought it was a girl. The hair was long enough, and the features pretty enough to be one of the few tomboyish young girls in the neighborhood, but then, the child had a stick in their hands, digging through the mud and turf and pulling up worms, pink tongue stuck out one corner of their lips in concentration, and Howard thought maybe not. Unusual behavior for a girl, at least according to his limited observations.

Then the kid stood up, and Howard realized two things at once: one, he was definitely a boy, and two, he was one of the _smallest_ boys Howard had ever seen. He couldn’t be that much younger than Howard, but his little face was all angles and eyes beneath that shaggy mop of dark blond hair. Compared to the broad, round-faced Northern lads around them, the new boy looked more like a picture from one of Howard’s old _Global Explorer_ s, a haunted, half-starved wild thing in an oversized school uniform.

It was the uniform that startled Howard the most. Half the boys on the football field attended the academy. None of them were wearing their school uniform on the weekend, to play footie in, especially not out in the Christmas chill with no coat over the blazer. 

Then, the strange boy flattened out his hands, displaying a palm full of pink, squirming worms. He made an odd little whistling click noise, and the birds descended. 

Howard was so busy staring at what appeared, to him, to be an actual Disney princess in oversized trousers, that he didn’t notice Peter Brown until he felt a tug on his arm. 

“Alright, Moon. You’re on my team,” Peter groused, tying a strip of red fabric onto Howard’s arm, tourniquet tight. “Don’t suppose you’ve learned not to flinch every time the ball comes near you over the break, hm?” 

“I never flinch.” Peter rolled his eyes, tugged the flag on Howard’s arm again, and then sauntered off to the next kid. 

When Howard looked back at the new boy, the birds had all fled, and he was beaming as Brian tied a yellow flag onto the shoulder of his jacket. When the older boy moved on, he untied it with nimble fingers, then fastened it around his neck like a scarf instead. It should have looked ridiculous. It didn’t.

“Red team, this side!” Peter bellowed across the field. “Yellow team, over that end!”

The kids on the field split, and Howard looked around as they spread. Most of the players were older boys, between ten and Brian and Peter’s wise old sixteen. Howard’s team had taken two girls as well as him, while the other team had only one girl and the new kid. Without meaning to, Howard took position across from the other boy. Their eyes met, and the kid winked. Howard felt it like a knee to the gut. He blamed the pounding in his chest on the excitement of the game.

One of the older boys whistled, and the ball soared into the air.

After that, it was a scramble. Howard was dually disadvantaged when it came to football. He struggled to keep the ball in his sights, and he had to try twice as hard as others to keep his lanky, overgrown limbs aimed in the direction they were meant to go. The ball whipped past him, headed for his team’s goal, and Howard jerked back.

“Moon, you pansy, _get it_ ,” Peter roared, and Howard dashed off after the black and white blur.

Somehow, inexplicably, he got it. Suddenly, Howard had the football right in front of him. He had no idea what to do with it. All knowledge fled his brain. He couldn’t remember which direction to run. He froze. 

As he stood there, planted in the grass like a sapling oak, a blue and yellow streak came barreling into him from the side.

The hit sent Howard flying back. His shoulders hit the soft turf first, and the blow knocked the breath from his lungs, and then his assailant landed square atop his chest. Howard gasped, fighting for air, feeling his head spin, and stared up at a pair of wide, smiling blue eyes beneath a blond mop. Howard was only vaguely aware of shouts, the sounds of jeering laughter from the other boys nearby. 

The boy perched on his chest was laughing too, but it was delighted, not cruel. “You ran slower than I thought!” he exclaimed before clambering to his feet. Stooping, he grabbed Howard by the arms as if he could haul him upright too.

Howard flinched, tried to say, “Don’t touch me!” but it came out as a thin whimper, his voice still hampered by the ache in his chest. The other boy ignored him anyway, pulled Howard to his feet with pursed lips and stubbornly braced, surprisingly strong legs. Past him, the other kids had continued the game without them, apparently unbothered that each team was a man short.

“I’m Vince.” He still had one hand gripping Howard’s arm. The other twirled a piece of longer hair around one finger. There was marker all over the side of his palm. “Just moved here. Did I hear that ginger boy call you _Moon_?”

“It’s Howard,” Howard croaked. “Howard T.J. Moon.” 

As Howard watched, Vince delved his grubby hand into the inner pocket of his blazer and pulled out a package of Haribo. He shook it, then frowned, finding it empty save for a single, squashed gummy worm at the bottom of the bag. 

“I’ve got a fiver in my trousers,” Howard found himself saying, unsure why he offered it even as he did. It was meant to be his Christmas money. He was going to save it up, buy a globe or maybe a record. Instead, here he was offering to split it with this boy he just met.

But something in the way Vince lit up at the suggestion made Howard feel warm despite the cold wind assaulting the damp, grass-stained patches on his clothes. Without more discussion than that, they left the football game behind and Howard lead them down the street, off toward the shop. 

“So, where did you move from?” Howard asked as they walked.

A slow, toothy smile overtook the smaller boy’s pointy features at the question. “Funny story, that,” he began, and then a twisting, enchanted yarn spilled forth from his lips. It wrapped itself around Howard from toe to tip and stretched on long after they finished their crisps and candy, sharing Howard’s windbreaker on a park bench, until the street lights came on, until Howard’s mum came out on the porch to yell him home for dinner, and onward throughout the rest of Howard’s life.

-

A loud, pointed cough interrupted Howard’s daydream, and he jumped, sending up a cloud of dust from the library chair. Mrs. Pierce, the librarian, was hovering over him. When she saw Howard startle, she looked up pointedly at the analog clock on the wall, the hands clicking steadily past five in the evening. 

“Don’t you have a home to get back to, Moon?” the old woman asked, tone sharp. “Because I can assure you, _I do_.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Howard scrambled to his feet, rushing to get out from under the woman’s steel grey eyes. “Have a good evening. Thank you.” 

He found himself in the empty school halls a moment later, alone again. Vince was probably still in his dorm room. Through the wide front windows, Howard could see the staid dormitory building across the lawn and the arch of rooftop that crowned the attic room. He pictured Vince up there, sitting on the bed and staring at the door, waiting to ambush Howard with accusations when he came in. It didn’t feel right. He changed the image in his head, and this time Vince was upset, curled up beneath the covers with his shaggy hair spread over a damp pillow. That one made Howard’s chest ache, and he knocked it away. In the vision that replaced it, Vince was sat up against the wall, a sketchbook propped on his knees. He had music playing and pens spread out on the sheets around him, as if it were any other day, as if he hadn’t even noticed Howard wasn’t home.

That one hurt most of all.

In the end, Howard didn’t want to open that attic door and learn which of his visions was correct. He stepped outside and turned his face away from the dormitory bricks.

The sun was just beginning to set, streaking the cloudy grey sky with lavender and blue. No one was out this evening, playing ball on the lawn or studying beneath a tree. A tremendous breeze whipped across the grass, setting empty crisp bags and fallen leaves scuttling for safety. 

Howard’s bike was right where he’d left it, tied to the rack by the path with a bit of rope. On some level, it was remarkable no one had taken it, but then, it was exactly an appealing image. The bikes on either side of it were bright-colored things with woven baskets and jaunty logos painted across the body. Howard’s bike was primer gray. The original seat had rotted years ago, and he’d replaced it with a seat from a girl’s bike, dirty white and far too small. In place of a basket, he had a plastic crate held on with zip ties. It was a Frankenstein monster of a bicycle, but it served its purpose. Howard untied it, rolled it onto the path, and heard a distinctive _flap-flap-flap_ sound.

The tyres were flat. Both of them. Groaning, Howard propped the bike back into the racks and didn’t bother tying it up again. 

“Fine,” he muttered to the universe, dusting the rust from his hands and leaving orange streaks on his school trousers. “I’ll walk home, then. It’s not that far.”

He made it all the way to the school gates before the fat grey clouds overhead opened up on him.

-

The downpour had slowed to a persistent, annoying drizzle by the time Howard reached his old neighborhood, but it was far too late to help him. Everything he was wearing had been drenched, and his hair hung limp down the side of his face. It was reasonably warm out, but the storm winds pushed the wet clothes against Howard’s skin, and when he reached the front gate of his family home, he was shivering. 

He stopped with his hand on the latch, staring up at the familiar little house. The front garden looked the same. His dad’s squat, ancient car sat in the drive with only a few new rust spots since the last time Howard had seen it. The house seemed smaller, though, and much older. Empty. All the windows were dark except one, and only a pale glow emerged from behind the curtains of his father’s office. He was working late again. 

Howard’s key still worked, though, and he let himself in quietly. Nothing had changed inside, either. The living room and kitchen were dark. A multicolored crochet blanket one of his aunts had made was draped over the back of the lumpy, harvest gold sofa, and Howard grabbed it. When he wrapped it around his shoulders to ward off the chill, he thought, for a moment, that he could smell his mum’s perfume, but the scent faded to mildew and stale smoke a heartbeat later.

He wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge. There wasn’t much to be found -- a few old takeout boxes with unidentifiable brown substances inside, a block of cheese, some milk and orange drink. Howard poured a glass of the orange drink and grabbed the cheese. It had gone dry on the end where it hadn’t been wrapped properly, but Howard carved that bit off and sliced some of the rest. Digging through the cupboard, he found a half sleeve of crackers and a box of raisins. 

It all felt so familiar. It was hard to believe it had been nearly three years since the last time he’d fed himself in this kitchen. Everything was right where it had been before. If someone had appeared and told him the cheese in his hand was three years old as well, he’d believe it. 

Howard gathered his findings onto a plate and headed through the living room and up the stairs. The wooden planks on the steps creaked and groaned with each foot fall, protesting Howard’s new growth since he’d last climbed them, and at the top of the landing, a door clicked open.

A stream of yellow light fell across the steps, smacking into Howard’s face, and he stopped, squinting into it. His dad stood in the office doorway, his face a black oval with the light behind him. Howard couldn’t see his expression. Silence grew between them.

“Oh,” his dad said suddenly. “You’re home.” That was it. Not, _you’re home late_ or _where have you been?_ or _nice to see you home again, son,_ just… Oh. You’re home.

“Yeah.” They stayed like that, paused mid-action, neither of them knowing what the next step was meant to be in this dance. Then, Howard’s dad nodded and stepped back. The office door clicked shut, and the only sign he left of himself was the strip of light at the floor.

Howard finished his creaky ascent of the steps and continued down the hall to his room. Pushing open the flimsy wooden door felt like opening a time capsule, or maybe a portal into Narnia. It was just like he’d left it the last time he stopped by to pick something up, which had been… Probably two years ago. That was hard to believe.

His bedroom was the polar opposite of Vince’s dorm. The bed was neatly made, crisp white sheets folded over a brown wool blanket. His books were alphabetized on a shelf against the wall, and his desk was clean. A small stationary village stood on one corner of the desk, the pens sorted by color, and beside that was his old record player. He set his plate and glass on a pair of coasters on his bedside table and went to comb through his closet for dry clothes to change into. 

The options, in terms of things that would still fit, were pretty limited, and that forced him to keep it simple. He ended up in a pair of gym shorts that rode up like y-fronts and a white vest that strained across his broadened chest, but it was better than being soaked to the skin. Hanging his wet uniform on the back of his door to dry, Howard climbed into bed, beneath the sheets.

It felt funny, picking at stale crackers and cheese in bed in this room. He’d never have eaten in bed before -- crumbs everywhere! Unfortunately, it seemed some of Vince’s bad habits had rubbed off on him after all. Plus, there simply wasn’t anywhere else for him to eat. His skin was prickling with leftover chills from the awful weather, and he piled the colorful blanket from the living room around his shoulders, swaddling himself in as much warmth as possible.

The food wasn’t particularly appetizing or filling, but it took the edge off Howard’s hunger. Stretched out on the bed, with the whole mattress all to himself, he tried to consider the positives of being back in his old room. No Vince taking up half the bed or getting paint stains on the pillowcase. Cheese and crackers was a more suitable meal than raspberry bootlaces, if nothing else. In fact, Howard had the whole room to himself, without the constant background hum of Vince’s voice, Vince’s music, a sewing machine, Vince’s little boot heels tapping on the hardwoods… 

Howard could do anything he wanted! He could watch whatever he liked on telly! Well, actually that was a bit useless. Howard’s bedroom didn’t have a TV, and he didn’t want to venture back into the living room. (Besides, telly was something he and Vince usually agreed on, and it wouldn’t be the same watching Captain Cabinets without Vince’s snorts of amusement in his ear.)

He could read. That would be a novel experience, reading more than a few pages of a book without hearing Vince saying, “Howard. Howard. _Howard_ ” in a desperate plea for his attention. Wrapping the blanket back around his barely-clothed body, he scanned the bookshelves, but he kept noticing gaps in the collection. No Tolstoy here. No Nabokov. Howard’s favorites were neatly stacked on the floor, in the corner of Vince’s room. 

Records presented the same problem. His collection was subdivided by genre and then alphabetized by surname, which made it easy to flip through. It also made it easy to tell how much was missing. Howard had moved his old favorites from this room to Vince’s years ago, and his new favorites had never been inside these four walls at all.

Still, he had to do something. It wasn’t even eight PM, and while he wouldn’t mind going to bed a bit earlier than normal, even Howard had his limits. He pulled out a Charlie Parker record he remembered liking and closed his eyes in bliss at the comforting, buzzing click of the needle touching vinyl. A few seconds later, the first smooth notes emerged, and Howard let out a deep sigh of pleasure. He had the night -- and the record player -- all to himself. 

A few minutes later, his eyes flew open as the room was rocked by a pounding at the door. “Howard! I’m trying to work,” his dad growled. “Shut off that damned noise!”

Wordlessly, Howard clicked the turntable off and listened to the sound of footsteps receding down the hall. Eight o’clock bedtime was beginning to sound a lot more appealing.

Sleep eluded him, though. It wasn’t only the early hour, though that didn’t help. With the lamp off, the air around him turned black -- no fairy light glow or street lamps outside the window. He could still hear the distant whoosh of tires on the street below, rain patterning against the window pane, but compared to what he was used to, that was utter silence. 

It had been nearly three years since he moved into Vince’s room. Three years, and yet it didn’t seem like that long, but it was more than long enough to adjust and form new habits. It was normal to him, now, to sleep with a little light and some quiet music playing in the background. It was normal to fall asleep in the flicker of a TV screen. Howard tucked the blanket up beneath his chin and spread his legs out, revelling in how much space he had to himself, but it felt so strange. He was used to the warm press of sharp knees in the backs of his thighs at night, the smell of lavender oil that Vince dotted onto their pillows after Howard did laundry. He was used to the way Vince talked in his sleep, murmuring nonsense words in a babble of animal tongues, chirping and hissing his way through one dream after another.

Somewhere across the years, those silly whispers had become Howard’s favorite lullaby. Without them, he could only lie awake, staring at the blank white walls of his room through the darkness.

If he were back in Vince’s room, he could ask for a bedtime story, but bedtime stories had never been much of a thing in this room. Howard’s mum wasn’t much for fairy tales and fables, usually opting instead to read Howard a bit of whatever book she was in the middle of at the time, whether that was a biography of Thomas Edison or a battered copy of _Heart of Darkness_.

Howard stared at his desk chair, remembering how she used to pull it over, tuck it up against the side of his bed in order to angle her book beneath his lamp light. Most of her stories hadn’t even been appropriate for children, but there had been a few. Howard remembered, vaguely, something about a teddy bear. 

From the scraps of his recollection, he tried to piece something together to tell to himself.

-

_The story began with a teddy bear, and the teddy bear was lost in the woods. He didn’t have a name, other than teddy bear, and if the story had once bothered to explain how he got lost to begin with, Howard had forgotten that part. As a child, he may not have cared as much for the how and why, but now he wished he’d asked what happened to the teddy before the story began. Did the teddy bear have a family? A friend? Had he wandered off somehow, or had someone dumped him in the forest like so much trash?_

_Didn’t matter, in the end. What mattered was that he was lost, alone, in the woods. It had been raining, and the teddy bear was wet, cold, and stumbling through the trees. The forest canopy sprinkled shade over the ground below, making the teddy squint in dim light. Everything felt draped in shadow, and the trees and rocks loomed like sleeping monsters of unknown origin on the edges of his vision. A crackle of dead leaves on the snap of a twig as he walked could make the small bear dive for cover in an instant, trembling and on the verge of tears at the threat of a passing fox or the sound of a red squirrel scrabbling for purpose against a tree trunk._

_He spent more of his time hiding than moving, waiting out the pounding of fear that overtook him while pressed into sides of boulders or divots in the ground. When he could, he ventured out in search of the path again, but amid the tapestry of brown and yellow leaves on the forest floor, he couldn’t tell if he was getting any closer to the tree line or only wandering further into the depths of the wood._

_A shuddering, choked noise caught his attention, and the wee bear scrambled through the leaves to hide under a bush, pressing his round belly flat to the damp earth. Through the sparse and thorny branches all around him, the teddy bear could see a creature in the distance, huddled shaking and alone._

_It was a child, he realized, when it raised a hand to swipe tears from its cheeks, leaving them streaked with mud. The boy’s hair was a tangle, and the knees of his pants were torn and spattered brown. He shook, hugging himself and sobbing into the shelter of his arms, and his thin little shoulders stuck out like emerging wings at the back of his oversized ivory sweater._

_After a few minutes, the teddy bear’s fear calmed, and he began worrying instead about the child. Lost or not, he was still a teddy bear, and teddies were made for children in need. Carefully, he squirmed out from beneath his hiding place, flinching when the bush thorns caught on his already damaged fur. The leaves crunched and scuttled beneath his feet as he crept toward the child, and with a loud inhale the boy sat up._

_He scrubbed a grubby hand across his cheek, smearing mud, and gave the teddy a watery smile. “Hello, teddy. Are you lost too?”_

_The bear nodded, because of course stuffed animals can’t talk._

_Tentative, the boy reached out and picked up the teddy bear. He clutched it to his chest, squeezing tight, and buried his face in the tattered fur. “I’ve been lost forever. Maybe, we can be lost together?”_

_That suited the bear just fine. Better to be lost together than be lost alone._

_They set out once more, the boy and the bear, neither with any idea of which way they ought to go. As they walked, the boy chattered on about his friends at home, his favorite games and shows, and his life before the woods. Most of the time he carried the teddy bear, tucking him tight into his body, but when they’d stop to rest the teddy would do tricks, tumbling about in the dead leaves or scurrying on all fours like a chipmunk, until the boy was smiling and clapping his hands._

_Even as the woods around them darkened, they pressed on, and the bear realized he no longer flinched at the sound of papery leaves. The boy’s face was still muddy, but he hadn’t cried any more since they left the first clearing._

_When it got too dark to find their way any further between the trees, the boy set the teddy down among the roots of one of the tallest elms. “We’ll go on in the morning,” he whispered as he lay down himself, pulling leaves up like a blanket around him. “Good night, teddy.” And the bear burrowed down again, curling into the little boy’s spindly arms._

_The boy woke early the next morning, roused by the songs of birds overhead and by the teddy bear, insistently tugging on his sweater. When he sat up and rubbed his eyes, he found a new forest, dappled in light, and up ahead was a slim, winding path of stone and soil. They’d slept in arm’s reach of the way out all night._

_Eager, the boy dusted himself off and picked up the teddy. They held onto each other tight as the boy jogged over the stones. Ahead, the tall trees thinned, and they both could see where the path emerged from the treeline into a pasture beyond._

_The boy stopped at the sight and hugged the teddy, crushing his face to its neck. “It wasn’t so bad being lost, in the end,” he confessed, “because I had you there to keep me company.”_

_And though the teddy bear couldn’t say it, he felt the same way. The forest wasn’t so dark after all, not so scary when he had a friend, and neither of them could know what awaited them beyond the treeline. The boy took a shuddering breath, and the bear held on tight to his neck, vowing silently to never let go._

_Together, they took those last few steps to the treeline, then out into the unknown worlds beyond._


	4. Chapter 4

Howard’s old suit almost fit. He’d last worn it to a cousin’s wedding, two years ago, and back then he’d been drowning in it. When Vince had seen the photos, he’d cackled like a witch and proclaimed that Howard looked like “a baby elephant with a skin disease.” Howard’s dad had assured him that it was best to buy the suit “a bit big” at Howard’s age, because he’d grow into it.

At some point, Howard had most likely grown into it. He’d since grown right back out. The chocolate brown trousers strained across his thighs and scurried up his ankles with every step, and the jacket had to be worn open to be worn at all. He’d made up for the length with a pair of socks in the same rich shade of dark brown, and tried to be positive about the jacket situation, which put his saxophone-themed necktie on full display. 

According to the posters around the school, the dance started at precisely seven PM, so Howard arrived at 6:57. He found the assembly hall doors thrown open wide, the room inside decorated with streamers and a slow rotating mirrorball. Academy staff were rushing to put out food and secure the punch bowl, and the DJ up on stage was still mucking about with cords. Aside from that, the room was empty. Howard was the first to arrive. 

He may not have Vince’s flair for a fashionably late entrance, but Howard still knew better than to be the first person in the room at a party, especially without a date. After a cautious peek around the corners of the assembly room, he fled back into the hall to burn a few minutes before trying again.

Howard wandered the dim hallways, arms clasped behind his back as he scanned over the old photos, oil painted portraits, and trophy cases that lined the walls. His footsteps echoed through the corridors, reminding him of the way Vince’s boot heels clicked on the dormitory floor. 

He wondered if the person Vince was waiting for had ever asked him to the dance. In their tiff, Howard had missed his chance to find out before tonight, and his pulse quickened at the thought that he might walk back into the assembly hall and find Vince in the arms of some girl he barely knew. He was sure Vince would turn up to the dance eventually, date or no date. After all, there would be music, bright lights, and free food. Vince would have to have both legs in a cast to not turn up to an event like that, and even then he’d probably arrive in a bedazzled wheelchair. 

Some people might be embarrassed to attend a formal dance alone, but Vince wouldn’t be, and Howard wasn’t either. In fact, he hadn’t yet given up hope that he’d end up with a date on his arm after all. While Howard had been digging through the bare cupboards in search of breakfast this morning, he’d overheard his dad on a phone call mentioning that Mrs. Gideon had volunteered to chaperone the dance. Howard’s musical overtures may not have had much success, but he was still a man of action. When all else failed, he always had the option of walking up to his target and asking her to dance.

He let his mind play out the scenario for a moment. He’d extend his hand, palm up, his other arm tucked behind his back like a wealthy gentleman in an Austen novel, and Gideon would blush like a schoolgirl. To complete the picture in his head, she inexplicably had a paper fan in her hand, and she used it to cover half her face as she delicately accepted his offer. They would waltz to the tune of “I Will Always Love You” while Howard’s classmates stared in open jealousy, and when he dipped Gideon at the song’s climax, she’d run her fingertip along his upper lip and compliment his sparse mustache.

The sole of Howard’s dress shoe squeaked against tile, and he blinked back into the present. He’d made it to the opposite end of the building, to the art department once again.

A clock on the wall told him it was now 7:18, and not even Vince would be caught up to his elbows in paint and construction paper at this hour. (At least, not most nights. Once or twice Howard had woken to find Vince gone from bed in the wee hours of the morning and had to drag him back across the lawn from these very rooms, but those were the bad days, the ones at winter holidays and summer break, the ones they never talked about.) Still, Howard couldn’t stop himself from sneaking a little peep through the art room window. When it came to Vince, Howard had all the instincts of a new father, paranoid that five minutes of silence meant the baby had stopped breathing.

The room was dark and seemingly empty, but Howard tried the knob anyway and found it unlocked. _Someone_ had either been in there late enough that the cleaning staff hadn’t secured the room or had jimmied the lock with a yogurt shop discount card again, and that was enough for Howard to need to step inside and flip the lights on. He blinked as the room flooded with fluorescents, eyes aching at the sudden contrast, and swept the room. There wasn’t much to see. The tables were empty and tidy, chairs pushed in. A stack of used paintbrushes and dishes scattered across the industrial sink on one wall told him that whoever had been in last hadn’t fully cleaned up after themselves. The cleaning staff wasn’t employed to scrub paint off plastic dishware.

A gleam of color of the far wall drew Howard’s eye, and he walked over to the project area, where a line of paintings and little clay sculptures were stacked in a row to dry. Howard would know Vince’s work even blindfolded and dizzy, with its thick lines and bold colors. The newest painting sat at a funny angle, tilted away from the door. In acrylic and canvas, a scene played out of a city rooftop, other buildings scattered and blurry in the distance. A stray cat arched its back in the foreground, and the moon loomed high in a sparkling, glitter-sprayed sky, winking down on the city with a Chesire grin. The moonlight streamed onto a pair of figures seated by a chimney, so close together their bodies nearly merged into one unit. Sketchy as they wore, undefined beyond dots of paint, Howard could still recognize them -- one, a riot of swirling colors, the other smeared with shades of brown and beige. 

Curious, Howard reached out to examine himself. His fingers came back wet with sienna. 

By the time he had shut out the light, locked the art room door, and made it back to the other end of the building, it was nearly eight, and the dance was well under way. There was a decent crowd down in front of the stage, bobbing to the electronic pop beat the DJ had chosen. Howard wrinkled his nose. Not his sort of music, but then, he could always put in a request. A little Weather Report well into the evening would surely blow every mind in the house. He’d probably get a few converts to the jazz band before leaving school, even.

Howard circled the outskirts of the dance floor. There were a few young ladies who seemed unaccompanied for the evening, and Howard tentatively ventured toward one of the younger girls, off in a corner. To an outsider, his pattern of movement appeared not dissimilar to a lion circling a herd of zebra, hoping to pick off a small one from the periphery. As Howard closed in, the girl spotted him. Their eyes met in a flash, and then she edged sideways, clustering together with a few other girls. The bright frills and rhinestones on their dresses caught the light, confusing him, and his target slipped away.

No problem. Howard had all night, after all, or at least until eleven, when the school would kick them out to be home before midnight. He headed toward the refreshments table, called by the siren song of crisps and fruit punch. He’d managed to scrounge enough rumpled money from under his old mattress to go to the kabob shop for lunch, but that was hours ago, and he knew there wasn’t much waiting for him in the pantry at his dad’s house.

Howard had his head down, focused on the food and ladling unspecified pink liquid into a tiny plastic cup, when he felt someone slip into line beside him, shoulder brushing his own. 

“Alright, Howard?” The clear plastic glass in Howard’s hand immediately began to sweat, and so did Howard.

Vince sounded a bit more subdued than usual as he peered up at Howard from beneath his fringe, scooping cheeses and biscuits onto a plate. At first, Howard was at a loss for words. Vince was wearing makeup -- even more than his usual affair, his eyes lightly rimmed in black and highlighted with streaks of violet. There was a dusting of glitter on both his cheeks, catching the rotations of the mirrorball overhead, and even his lips glistened pink.

Despite the dance being labeled a formal event, Vince had once again taken the dress code as more of a suggestion. His black denim jeans were ripped at the knees, and if the plain white t-shirt tucked into them was a conservative choice, the midnight blue velvet blazer embroidered with sun and star symbols over it made up for that. Howard glanced down and recognized the platform boots as an old pair, except the last time he’d seen them they’d been white. Now, they were painted gold, to coordinate with the embroidery on the blazer.

Howard was _staring_. He realized it when Vince’s hopeful expression began to falter, doubt clouding his blue eyes, and Howard reached out quickly to brush his fingertips over Vince’s lapel. “You do all this yourself, little man?”

Vince’s smile bloomed. “Yeah. Spent most of yesterday on it, and last night. I’m _knackered_.”

“Looks good. It was worth it.” The dance floor lights had nothing on Vince in full beam. Howard had to look away. “Who’d you end up coming with, then?”

Vince gestured toward the dance floor, where a girl with bright ginger bunches was dancing with a smaller, mousy blonde with hair clipped short as a boy’s. “Alicia Cunningham.” 

Howard was pretty sure that was the ginger one. He squinted at her. She seemed… freckly. Was that Vince’s type? Howard tried to remember if he’d ever noticed Vince having a type beyond “sparkly.” Maybe the freckles were like skin sparkles to Vince, and he was a magpie, pecking at her flesh.

The plastic cup in Howard’s hand squealed, protesting his tightening grip, and he stepped back from the table. “Fun,” he said flatly. “I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time.”

“Do you want to come dance?” Vince held up his own plate in a gesture toward the floor again, where the two girls were pressed tight together. “I told Alicia I’d be back with snacks, but if you wanted to, I bet her friend would dance with you. Then we could swap after.”

“No, thank you.” Howard had gotten enough of girls making moon calf eyes at Vince in the hallways. He didn’t fancy being treated to it up close and personal, shuffled off as pity date to some girl he’d never met. 

“Oh.” Vince bit at his bottom lip, smearing tinted gloss over his teeth. “If you change your mind--”

“Have fun with your date.” Howard snatched his plate off the table and retreated to a line of chairs against a nearby wall.

As he nibbled on his horderves, he eyed the other students sitting against the wall, sizing up likely targets. There weren’t many girls around who appeared to be alone, and most of them were on the younger end, not anyone Howard knew. A dark-haired girl looked his direction, and Howard raised his eyebrows, gesturing toward the dance floor. She quickly looked away, and Howard turned his attention back to his plate.

Out at the center of the dance floor, Vince was dancing enthusiastically with his date’s friend, bouncing on his toes along with whatever electro bop the DJ was spinning. At least one of them was having a good night.

Then, Howard spotted her. It was like a moment from a film -- a bit of spotlight from the mirrorball, suddenly illuminating the flash of her spectacles, perched so gently at the tip of her nose. Mrs. Gideon hadn’t bothered to dress specially for the event, and Howard respected that. She was a respectable woman, after all, not one of these flighty young things obsessed with glitter and satin. Gideon was outfitted as if she were still teaching class, in a blazer, pencil skirt, and sensible shoes. Her hair was twisted up in the usual bun. Still, beneath the flashing rainbow lights, Howard thought she was dazzling. 

His opportune moment had arrived. Gideon was alone near the dance floor, her lips curled in a slight smile as she watched the students dancing, and it couldn’t simply be Howard’s imagination to say her expression was wistful. She was clearly a woman longing for a dance partner, and now it was Howard’s time to shine.

Setting aside his plate and cup, Howard scrubbed his palms against the tops of his thighs to remove any condensation that could be misconstrued as sweat. With a deep, shuddering inhale, he rose from his chair and ventured out across the dance floor.

Gideon never even saw him coming. She was focused on a nearby couple who were writhing to the beat, carefully examining the centimeters of light she could see between their bodies. Howard was at her shoulder before anyone could stop him. He covered his mouth with his fist and faked a loud cough, so close to Gideon’s ear that she visibly jumped.

She spun, one hand hovering over her heart at the shock, then quickly recovered. Pushing her glasses back up her nose with one manicured finger, she pursed her lips and peered up at Howard. “Yes, may I help you?” She paused, then lowered her voice slightly before asking, “Are you being bullied?”

“What? No, I--” Howard floundered, flustered by the unexpected question. Swallowing, he gathered himself again and extended his hand, bowing slightly. “May I have this dance?”

Gideon had a musical laugh, but this wasn’t the time Howard wanted to hear it. “I’ll take that as a compliment, but I’m a teacher. You must be visiting from another school. Where do you attend?”

Howard’s heart deflated, loudly, sputtering like a wet balloon. “Mrs. Gideon, I’m a student here.” The woman stared at him with a quizzical expression. “I’ve come here since year one!” Howard’s voice was climbing in both volume and register. “It’s Howard, Howard Moon. I’m in sixth form!” On the last work, his voice cracked into a squeak, and Howard froze, mortified. 

But Gideon’s eyes had lit with understanding. “Moon? There’s a teacher here called Moon. Are you related?” 

“Yes, he’s my--”

“Such a nice man.” Gideon smiled, but her eyes were aimed over Howard’s shoulder at the wall beyond. “It’s a shame about what happened with his wife. Probably for the best there were no children involved, messy situation like that.”

Howard was used to being disappointed. He was even used to being forgotten. But something about this sentiment -- the rejection, the neglect, and then such a pitying mention of his mother -- turned Howard’s inner turmoil upside down. Heat spread from Howard’s chest to his fingertips, his sudden anger like a wildfire speeding through a forest. He had nothing to say to Gideon. If he opened his mouth, only venom would spill out, and he knew he’d regret that later. Fists clenched, Howard turned and stalked away, past the refreshments table, past the dance floor and the faraway sound of someone calling his name, out of the assembly hall door and into the darkened hallways.

Someone had propped open the building’s double doors, probably to keep students from smoking on the steps. A cool evening breeze blew through the doorway, scattering leaves through the old halls, and Howard took a deep breath of the fresh air. It helped, some. The angry burn that had propelled him out of the dance began to ebb.

It flared back to life at the feeling of a hand settling onto his shoulder. Howard jerked back, snapping, “Don’t touch me!”

Eyeliner made Vince’s eyes look even larger than usual. “Come on, Howard,” he cajoled. “You can’t come stalkin’ around out here. You’ll scare the other kids right off with that face. Let’s go dance.”

“I’ve got no one to dance with,” Howard spat through clenched teeth. “No one in there will even look at me.”

“I’m lookin’ at you.” It wasn’t, technically, true. Vince had dropped his gaze to the floor, watching as he tapped the toe of one gold boot against the hardwood. “I’ll dance with you.”

“Howard Moon doesn’t need your pity.” Howard turned back toward the open front door. A walk would help clear his head, but before he could leave, he felt Vince’s fingers plucking at the back of his sleeve again. He shook it off. “Let me _go_ , Vince. Go dance with one of the girls who asked you.”

“I don’t _want_ to dance with some girl.” Vince was whining now, like a child, but then his voice dropped to a near-whisper, the private tone that Howard only ever heard from him when they were in bed, in the dark. “Don’t wanna dance with anyone but you, ‘oward.” 

“Vince…” Howard started the sentence unsure of how to finish it. Half of him wanted to march out the door and disappear into the night. No matter what Vince claimed, Howard was sure he’d get over it if he had to. If Howard walked out, Vince would surely be back on the dance floor with a crowd of friends in five minutes. 

But Vince’s mumbling confession had dampened the embers of Howard’s earlier humiliation. He turned, intending to at least say good night, and felt the words die in his throat. 

Vince was _crying_. Howard could see the sparkle on his long lashes that didn’t come from excess glitter. His cheeks were red, and his eyes would be soon too. It was one of Vince’s little secrets -- for all his effort at being beautiful, he was a dreadfully ugly crier. His face went all red and scrunchy, and his nose would run like a faucet at the first hint of tears. Vince swiped at his face with the sleeve of his jacket, and the sight of that first streak of smeared mascara set off every alarm in Howard’s brain.

Soon, he had both hands on Vince’s cheeks, thumbs swiping away the tears before they could get too far. There was glitter on the back of his hand, smudges of makeup on the cuff of his beige dress shirt. “Hey. Hey, now. None of that, little man. You’ll mess up your look.”

“Too late for that,” Vince said between sniffles, but his smile was already coming back, amusement tugging irresistibly at the corners of his lips. “I’m going to look like a meerkat that’s joined a grunge band.”

“I hear that’s in this year.” Vince giggled, and Howard tried to sound outraged. “It’s true! I read it in _Cheekbone_.”

“What issue was that?”

“Last week.”

“Last week! That’s practically cave wall scrawlings in fashion terms.” They were both smiling now, settling into the familiar pattern. 

“Alright.” Howard tugged Vince by the sleeve over toward the assembly hall door, pausing beneath one of the wall sconces. “Let’s look at you.” Fingers set to the other boy’s pointy chin, he tilted his head toward the light. 

“I’m ruined, aren’t I?” Vince sighed. His cheeks and the tip of his nose were still a bit red, and his eyeliner was looking decidedly more dispersed than it had been, but all in all, it seemed Howard had caught him before the damage could get too serious.

“You’ll live. No one will be able to tell in the dark, anyway.” Howard started to pull back, but Vince caught his hand as he withdrew.

“No, I’m definitely ruined.” The extra darkness beneath them enhanced the burning blue in Vince’s eyes. “You’ll have to dance with me. No one else will have me now.”

The ploy was laughable -- Vince could have smeared his entire body in bright pink paint and dyed his hair silver and still found someone willing to dance with him -- but the silliness of the suggestion was precisely why it worked. Somehow, this earnest yet ridiculous statement filtered through all the layers of doubt and discomfort in Howard’s mind, and it occurred to him (however briefly) that Vince genuinely wanted to dance with him. 

Him. Howard. Out of everyone in the entire bloody school. 

What sort of an idiot would turn that down?

Of course, Howard couldn’t accept too easily. He made a show of sighing and shrugging, shifting his weight from foot to foot as if the idea was some great burden on his time. He played it up until Vince’s smile began to falter, and then abruptly snapped the act to a close. 

“Oh, alright,” Howard huffed, offering his arm. “I guess I’ll do it, so no one else has to suffer.”

Vince rolled his eyes, but took the arm, looping his own through and then leaning into Howard’s side. “My hero.”

“That’s just who I am, sir. I can’t help myself. I see a problem, I solve it. That’s why they call me--”

“The resolver?” Vince suggested, laughing, as they stepped back into the dance.

Overhead lights glowed pink and spotlit the dance floor. Teenagers, paired off, were draped over each other, swaying slowly off time with the beat as Cyndi Lauper’s voice echoed from the rafters, singing “Time After Time.” 

Watching them, a cold wash of fear pricked Howard’s skin as he realized that, for all his planning to seduce Mrs. Gideon, he had missed one crucial step in preparing for this night. 

Vince must have felt or heard Howard freeze up, because he stopped, craning his neck up to check in. “What’s wrong now?”

“I… I don’t know how to dance.” Howard’s only experience with dancing so far had been a few awkward twist attempts with his grandmother at a family wedding when he was little, and the occasional guilty bop when he was listening to records with the bedroom door locked. 

“Aw, that’s nothing,” Vince scoffed, but of course he’d think that. Vince was always dancing, even when there was no music to be had. Why walk across the room to snag something from the wardrobe when you could shuffle or twirl there? “C’mon.” Vince seized Howard’s hand and tugged, insistent enough to break through his paralysis.

They ended up in a corner, still on the dance floor but out of reach of the brightest lights. Howard could make out a few other dancers moving in the shadows, including a whole foursome of girls in long skirts, not dancing together so much as circling in a witchy sway. 

“It’s just slow dancing,” Vince said. “It ain’t that difficult. You don’t even really need a rhythm.” 

He reached for Howard’s hand again, and Howard snapped it back. “Don’t touch me.” They both knew that was reflex, and Vince only rolled his eyes and grabbed again. He pulled Howard’s hand beneath his blazer and cupped it onto his waist. Howard froze, though not literally this time. Vince was so _warm_ , even with a shirt still separating Howard’s palm from his skin, and all Howard could think of suddenly was how much hotter he must be underneath. 

Vince grabbed his other hand while Howard was still distracted, cupped it onto his waist on the other side, and then looped his own wrists around Howard’s neck. He paused there, giving Howard a second more to adjust to all the sudden touching. “Alright?”

Howard nodded, and Cyndi Lauper stopped singing, replaced by the mournful tones of Thom Yorke. Vince pursed his lips as it sunk in that the music had changed tone and they were about to be slow dancing to “Creep” instead, but then he shrugged, breaking back into a grin.

“Right. Now you just sort of… shift your weight around.” Vince demonstrated, rocking from one foot to the other, and Howard, frowning, tried to match him. “ _Relax_ ,” Vince insisted, shaking Howard lightly by the shoulders. “Don’t lock up your knees so much. It’s like dancing with a Cyberman.” 

Howard tried, but it was impossible to both concentrate and relax at the same time. He stared down at their feet, watching them tap from side to side. He could feel Vince watching him, and didn’t know where else to look. He was conscious, constantly, of the firmness of Vince’s waist beneath his hands, the warm pulse of Vince’s fingers at the back of his neck. 

No matter how much Howard told himself to relax, to soothe his pulse pounding in his ears, he still felt stiff and awkward, more like a rocking horse than a dancer. He squinted over at the other pairs in the center of the floor and spotted the girl Vince came with. She was pressed flush against her friend, swaying sinuously. Her partner’s fingers were toying with a lock of her hair, and their foreheads pressed together as they stared into one another’s eyes. Howard glanced around. Other couples were similarly clinched. 

“This feels wrong,” Howard muttered. 

Vince ducked his head, eyes sliding away from Howard’s. “Guess I should have worn a dress after all,” he said. “Or a skirt, at least, but I wasn’t sure.”

“No, that’s not it. I mean--” Vince _did_ have some nice dresses. Howard imagined the slick slide of bright colored fabric beneath his fingers and felt his cheeks heat. He pulled on Vince, hands twitching against his will. “Aren’t we meant to be closer together.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Vince breathed, grinning. “Guess we can do that.” 

He stepped in a bit, and _oh_. That was different. That was _entirely_ different. Vince’s chest pressed against Howard’s, scant millimeters of fabric between them, and he could feel the rise of Vince’s breath. Vince’s arms moved too -- one, dropping to wrap around Howard’s back beneath his arm, while the other stayed cupping the nape of his neck, absent fingers tugging at the curls there.

It was like sleeping. No, it wasn’t, but it was like when they’d first started sleeping together. (Sharing a bed, he means, not… not the other thing.) Those first few nights, after Howard unofficially moved into Vince’s room, he’d soon noticed how often he woke up sweating, Vince half draped over him or curled against his side. _It’s the jungle_ , Vince had explained, unselfconscious even when Howard shook him awake from a whimpering, kicking nightmare. _When you live with animals, everyone curls up to sleep together, like a litter of kittens._

At some point in the years since, those sweaty, tangled mornings had grown less and less frequent, and Howard had never once complained. Now, his fingers clutched at Vince’s waist, as if there were space to pull him even closer. His heart was thrumming in his ears loud enough to drown out the words of the song.

The strangest thing about this whole situation -- dancing with his best mate at a formal to Radiohead -- was how normal it felt, and that made it circle back around to being weird. Because Howard and Vince, they weren’t normal, and neither were their lives. The whole thing was too John Hughes to ever be real. 

“Let’s run away,” Howard blurted. “We’ll leave tonight. Pack a bag, Vince, we’re going to the city.”

Even in the dim light of the dance floor, Howard could see Vince’s eyes blaze, the curve of his lip. “Already? But what about my A-levels?”

“Exams aren’t important, Vince. It’s what’s inside that counts. Life! Adventure. That’s what matters, little man.” He paused, then played the old hand, the schoolyard taunt. “Unless you’re afraid, that is.”

“ _I’m_ up for it,” Vince said slyly. “But I don’t know about you. We tried to run off twice already, didn’t we? Last time we only made it to the front gate.”

“Who’s fault is that? You had twenty suitcases! Try leaving a few spare kimonos in the room next time.”

“How dare you. I need every one of those. They all match a different pair of slippers.” The argument was familiar, which was perfect, because Vince’s fingers were distracting, his painted nails curling in little scratches to the back of Howard’s neck. 

Howard still had to swallow and wet his lips to buy time to remember the next line. “This time we’ll bring more money, so we can pay bus fare for more than a few blocks.”

“Yeah? Where’s the money come from?”

“I’ve got a stash.”

“The one in your socks that I bought paint with, or the one behind the records that I used on a pair of boots last week?” Howard’s hands tensed on Vince’s waist, and Vince laughed loud enough that other students looked over to see what was going on. For a second, Howard felt self-conscious, aware again that he was in a crowd. 

Then, Vince’s fingers slid from his nape to his chin, tilting Howard’s face back down until their eyes reconnected. “Kidding. Kidding, Howard. I didn’t take your money. What kind of boots could I even buy with ten euro?”

“Sturdy ones,” Howard answered reflexively. “Good, strong, working men’s boots.”

Vince wrinkled his nose. “Sounds awful. I can smell ‘em already.”

“There’s nothing wrong with work, Vince. When we get to London, you’ll see. We’ll both have to get real jobs, then, probably unpleasant jobs. We’ll come home tired and sore--”

“And smelling like shit,” Vince interjected.

“-- but it’s not about that. It’s about the sense of _satisfaction_ you get from earning those aches and calluses with a hard day’s work.”

“Calluses?” Vince yelped. “Nevermind, Howard. You go to London all you like. Think I’ll stay in Leeds.”

Howard was warming up his next argument still. He’d had this whole bit planned about selling some of their smarmiest classmates into forced labor overseas in order to make some extra funds, and he knew Vince would have a fit when they started picking which ones would be worth the most, but the joke died unspoken when he felt Vince lean in and rest his head against his shoulder.

When Vince chuckled, his breath stirred Howard’s hair against his cheek. “Oi, Howard, they’re playing our song.”

It was enough distraction that Howard remembered to breathe again. He was right, in a way. The song had switched again -- not “Ziggy Stardust,” as Howard had assumed, but “Changes.” That was a good option too.

 _Every time I thought I'd got it made,_ Bowie crooned, _it seemed the taste was not so sweet_. 

Swaying back and forth to the beat, Howard loosened his death grip on Vince’s waist and looped his arms around, holding his friend in a loose embrace. Vince was humming in his ear, a little off the melody like a counter improvisation, the accidental jazz stylings of Vince Noir. Even though he wasn’t clutching at the other boy anymore, Howard felt like the teddy bear in his mother’s old story. He and Vince were standing at the edge of the forest at last, but he wasn’t sure what lay in wait beneath the sunlight. For the first time, Howard felt afraid, truly afraid of what lay ahead of them.

In a few weeks, all joking aside, Howard would graduate and leave for university. He was sure Vince would be close on his heels, once he got the chance to follow. In no time, they’d be living together again, in a new place with the same patterns. Howard didn’t know any other way they could be. 

But, in this moment, with Vince warm and breathing deep in his arms and Bowie reminding them beneath a fading light that _time may change me_ , Howard felt his eyes burn with the certainty that his life would look quite like this again.

-

_”That’s IT?” Charlie screeched. Her voice, in full outrage, was worse than a smoke alarm, and Howard winced. “That’s not it! You can’t end it there!”_

_“I can, and I will,” Howard answered calmly as he stood, reaching for the top hem of the rainbow-crocheted quilt to pull it up under his daughters’ chins._

_Next to her sister, Ziggy’s quieter pout signaled her own frustration. She pulled the two fingers she’d been sucking on from her mouth and twirled a section of her tight, dark curls around them. “But that’s not even the story we asked for,” she argued. “You were s’ppsed to tell us your first kiss.”_

_“That’s right!” Charlie’s pale, spindly arms flew into the air, dislodging the blanket Howard had just fixed. “You don’t even kiss in that one. Daddy, make him tell us the real one!”_

_Howard whipped around at Charlie’s sudden entreaty to the doorway. Vince had his arms folded, leaning against the wall of Howard’s childhood bedroom with his legs crossed at the ankle. He would have looked every bit the cocky rockstar in training if not for the oversized plaid pajama pants slouching off his hips. His panda bear slippers weren’t doing him any favors, either._

_He still had the same mischievous grin, though. “‘Think I remember that dance a bit differently there, ‘oward.”_

_Howard flushed. “This version’s better,” he muttered. “And more suitable for the babies.”_

_“We’re not babies. We’re big girls,” Ziggy said. At least, that was what Howard assumed she said. It was all a bit garbled around the two fingers that were back in her mouth._

_“That’s right; we’re big girls. You ‘least need to tell us the real story.”_

_“The real one,” Ziggy babbled, nodding._

_Howard righted the quilt, dabbing at a spot of yellow paint on Charlie’s cheek in the process. “Maybe someday, when you’re older,” he told them. “But now, it’s bed time, and that means you’ll have to dangle. The rest is another story, for another night.”_

_Stooping, he dropped a kiss to the top of each girl’s head, then stepped back to let Vince do the same. Their fingers tangled as Vince turned out the light, and when they stepped out into the silent blackness of the stairwell and gently shut the old bedroom door, Howard heard Vince humming, snatches of a melody barely conscious under his breath._

__Turn and face the strange, _Howard thought._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about uhhh everything in this. I'm overflowing with thoughts. Including a lot more thoughts about Ziggy and Charlie. But, for now, thanks for putting up with nearly 25k of My Bullshit. Let me know if you were into it (or want some of these thoughts to overflow into your ears)


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